Our current priorities
One of the key priorities of the new European Commission is to make the European Union a “leading role model for a society empowered by data to make better decisions – in business and the public sector” and to create a “single market for data”.
With the European Commission looking to develop data access and data sharing across the EU through common data spaces, the European Alliance for Research Excellence is advocating for an open approach to data in Europe, to ensure Europe’s competitiveness and future prosperity.
More specifically, we call on data to be “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” as we believe that what is most valuable are the insights that come out of data, rather than the data itself. In this regard, our key priorities are:
- 1
Voluntary Data Sharing
Working with EU policy-makers to build the right economic and technical incentives for voluntary data sharing;
- 2
Collaborative IP Framework
Promoting a European and global IP framework that facilitates data sharing and minimizes unnecessary IP obstacles to data collaboration;
- 3
Privacy Protection
Clarifying the interplay between privacy and data sharing–highlighting the fact that effective data collaboration involving personal data can co-exist with maintaining robust privacy protections;
- 4
Codes of Conduct for Data Sharing
Encouraging the development and adoption of (cross-) sectoral codes of conduct on data sharing;
- 5
Open Standards for Data
Promoting the use of common (open) standards as part of the EU framework for data spaces, to ensure available data is open and usable.
IP & DATA
We strongly believe that mechanisms currently in place, (IP rights, contractual law, as data-sharing agreements), provide adequate protection for data. To that effect, we have been actively participating to WIPO’s Conversation on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence.
More specifically, creating additional rights in order to protect data beyond what is already available today is not necessary and could actually impede innovation by placing unnecessary barriers to the use of data for developing AI and related technologies, especially for researchers and Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs).