European Commission: “The proposed Regulation on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data — also known as the Data Act — was adopted by the Commission on 23 February 2022. The Data Act is a key pillar of the European strategy for data. It will make an important contribution to the digital transformation objective of the Digital Decade.
The new measures complement the Data Governance Regulation proposed in November 2020, the first deliverable of the European strategy for data. While the Data Governance Regulation creates the processes and structures to facilitate data, the Data Act clarifies who can create value from data and under which conditions.
The Data Act will ensure fairness by setting up rules regarding the use of data generated by Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
Users of objects or devices generally believe that they should have full rights of the data they generate. However, these rights are often unclear. And, manufacturers do not always design their products in a way that allows users, both professionals and consumers, to take full advantage of the digital data they create when using IoT objects. This leads to a situation where there is no fair distribution of the capacity to build on such important digital data, holding back digitisation and value creation.
Furthermore, the Data Act aims to ensure consistency between data access rights, which are often developed for specific situations and with varying rules and conditions. While the Data Act is without prejudice to existing data access obligations, any future rules should be consistent with it. Existing rules should be assessed and, if relevant, aligned to the Data Act when their review is due…(More)” (see also: Study to support an Impact Assessment on enhancing the use of data in Europe).