Data is often a business's most valuable asset, yet it is frequently left unprotected. Unlike a brand or an invention, a dataset has no single registration that secures it. Protection comes instead from a combination of rights and safeguards: the sui generis database right, copyright in original structures, trade secret protection for confidential data, and the contracts that govern who may access and use it.
The EU sui generis database right protects the substantial investment made in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of a database, independently of any copyright in the data itself. Confidential datasets, models and know-how can be protected as trade secrets, provided reasonable steps are taken to keep them secret. In practice the strongest protection is often contractual: access controls, confidentiality terms, and a clear allocation of ownership in the data created or enriched in a collaboration.
Protecting data sits in the Protect stage of our 360 method, within the Data, Data Protection and AI focus area. It works hand in hand with our data processing agreements and DPO as a Service on the compliance side, and it is the foundation for data licensing and data sharing once you want to commercialise that data. The background reading sits in the Knowledge Base on data retention and records of processing, and the structured record of what data you hold is maintained through our Privacy Register technology.
We map the data you hold, identify which rights and safeguards apply, put the confidentiality and access framework in place, and make sure ownership is locked down in your contracts before the data is shared or licensed.
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