5 results
Foreword
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- By Sjef van Erp
- Edited by Christine Godt, Geertrui Van Overwalle, Lucie Guibault, Deryck Beyleveld
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- Book:
- Boundaries of Information Property
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 17 December 2022
- Print publication:
- 16 August 2022, pp v-viii
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Summary
This project has quite a long history. It goes back to an idea, presented some 25 years ago, that information could, as such, be an economically valuable, identifiable object to which a subject could have rights vis-à-vis a relevant and considerable group of other subjects. In other words, that information as such could be the object of a property right. The question proved to be almost unexpected and was met with reluctance as to whether this could be a relevant research question at all. At that time, information was generally considered to only be legally relevant in cases where intellectual property rights, including a database right, could be found, and where information qualified as a protected trade secret. To understand this reluctance better, we should realise that this idea was presented before the rise of the data economy, with its Big Data and a new profession – data scientists – and before new developments that have simultaneously and radically changed how we look at data, such as distributed ledger technology, blockchain, smart contracts, the sensorisation of society, the Internet of Things, machine learning and artificial intelligence. All these developments have transformed our society fundamentally, but they are all also very recent. Within a relatively limited time frame, we find ourselves no longer living in just one (i.e. real) world, but in a mixture of spheres where the physical world and the virtual world not only meet, but indeed come together as interwoven and interdependent, creating a hybrid world, particularly in our minds. Twenty-five years ago, there was also not the same awareness as now that there are more sources of valuable information than we tended to recognise, such as information hidden in customs and traditions. Arguing, as is done in traditional common law cases, that pure information can never be property is, therefore, from today’s perspective, an open-ended statement that is just too farreaching to be true, and at the end of the day even meaningless. What is pure information? Is not all information ‘pure’, whatever its contents and shape? We need to accept that, in our present society, information, laid down in data, is so omnipresent, affecting both our view of what it means to be a person and what we consider to be an object of economic value, that we cannot and should not deny its legal relevance.
Who “Owns” the Data in a Coronavirus Tracing (and/or Tracking) App?
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- By Sjef van Erp
- Edited by Ewoud Hondius, Marta Santos Silva, Andrea Nicolussi, Pablo Salvador Coderch, Christiane Wendehorst, Fryderyk Zoll
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- Book:
- Coronavirus and the Law in Europe
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 10 December 2021
- Print publication:
- 01 August 2021, pp 131-156
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Summary
To combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus, e-health has taken a sudden leap forward. Already use cases were studied to see if by means of advanced IT tools, particularly e-health applications (apps), patients could be monitored from their homes so they did not need to visit a hospital for frequent checks. The Corona pandemic gave rise to the rapid development of tracing (and/or tracking) e-health apps, which allow quickly finding the source of an infection as well as others who might have been infected because they were in the close vicinity of someone who became ill. The development and widespread use of these apps makes it even more urgent than before to answer questions regarding to whom the data gathered through such apps belong and what belonging means. Can the owner of the mobile device be considered the “owner” of the data, what does “ownership” then mean, do other stakeholders (such as health care providers, public health authorities) also have a claim to “ownership”?
INTRODUCTION: E-HEALTH AND CORONAVIRUS APPS
As might have been expected in a rapidly expanding hybrid world, in which physical reality integrates with digital and virtual reality, lockdowns and forced physical isolation to combat the COVID-19 virus have resulted in an incredibly fast changing use of Internet Technology. We suddenly find online meetings no longer a surrogate for “real” meetings and we get used to, whenever possible, working at and from home to avoid running the risk of being infected by leaving the place where you live. All at once, e-health gains momentum, as doctors experience difficulties getting in touch with their patients in hospitals. Studies have already been conducted about the use of mobile phone or tablet applications (apps) to monitor patients while at home, but these were for the most part so-called “use cases” meant to test the app and see if the results are at least comparable to actual physical meetings with a patient. Sometimes these apps have already reached the stage of accepted tools in medical care, such as apps which allow you to take a picture of your skin, send it digitally to a health service provider whose servers, supported by Artificial Intelligence, perform an algorithm based check to see if, for example, there was a possibility of skin cancer.
12 - Data Protection in Hybrid Worlds
- from Part IV - Privacy, Security and Data Protection
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- By Sjef van Erp
- Edited by Larry A. DiMatteo, Michel Cannarsa, Cristina Poncibò
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Smart Contracts, Blockchain Technology and Digital Platforms
- Published online:
- 25 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 10 October 2019, pp 233-239
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Summary
Data are an essential part of a person’s patrimony called “digital assets.” Data are traded, can be seized, and can also be inherited. This hybrid world raises very fundamental questions from a traditional private law viewpoint. The following brief examination will show what these questions are, focusing on – what is traditionally called “property law” – arguing that we need to develop a legal system parallel to traditional property law, which you might call “data property law.”
13 - European Union property law
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- By Sjef van Erp, Maastricht University, Bram Akkermans, Maastricht University
- Edited by Christian Twigg-Flesner, University of Hull
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to European Union Private Law
- Published online:
- 05 July 2015
- Print publication:
- 20 May 2010, pp 173-186
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Summary
Introduction
Property law, that is, the law dealing with ‘rights against the world’ with regard to objects in that world, tangible and intangible, is traditionally a very nationally-oriented area of law. Property law, especially the ownership of land, forms the foundation upon which many other areas of law, such as tax law, environmental law and succession law are built. Most of these areas were excluded from the Treaty of Rome 1957. The law of property is, therefore, traditionally conceived as an area in which European law, more specifically, the law of the European Union, has hardly any or no effect. For that reason, property lawyers still generally restrict themselves to studying law as a national discipline and do not take into consideration the already existing and potential effects of European integration.
Property lawyers often feel strengthened in their traditionally national approach by Article 295 EC [Article 345 TFEU]. This states that ‘this Treaty shall in no way prejudice the system of property ownership in the Member States’. However, this Article has not stopped the European legislature, nor the European Court of Justice (ECJ), from acting also in this area of the law. Article 295 [Article 345 TFEU] refers more to what is known as the principle of neutrality in EU competition law. In other words, the Treaty does not apply to the decision of a Member State to hold shares in a company as a form of public ownership or the decision to sell government-held shares to a private party in order to privatise ownership of companies. A good example of this is the recent takeover of privately-held banks by governments as part of a rescue operation to avoid insolvency of these banks. The decision to take over banks is as such a matter for the Member State, unlike giving these banks financial support, which is a matter of EU competition law.
11 - The New Dutch Law of Succession
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- By Sjef van Erp, University of Maastricht
- Edited by Kenneth Reid, University of Edinburgh, Marius de Waal, Reinhard Zimmermann, University of Regensburg
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- Book:
- Exploring the Law of Succession
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 12 September 2012
- Print publication:
- 26 October 2007, pp 193-207
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Summary
THE NEW LAW IN OUTLINE
Introduction
On 1 January 2003, after a long period of reflection and parliamentary debate, the new Dutch law of succession entered into force as Book 4 of the Civil Code. It was accompanied by the new law on gifts in Book 7 (Special Contracts). As can be seen from the legislative history, it took more than thirty years after the enactment of Book 4 before the new law could enter into force. Particular controversy had surrounded the position of the surviving spouse and children, especially in a situation where the surviving spouse remarries and the new husband or wife also has children.
This chapter outlines the new law of succession, both testate and intestate, focusing on the rights of the surviving spouse and children. It then sets the basic features of the new law against the general part on property law in the new Civil Code, and considers these from the perspective of comparative legal analysis. It is necessary to begin, however, with a few introductory remarks on Dutch matrimonial property law because, as is well known, the law of succession and matrimonial property law are closely interrelated.
Matrimonial property law
The Netherlands is one of the very few countries left that still knows total community of property if no marriage settlement has been concluded. Under total community of property, everything that the spouses owned from before the marriage, and their debts, become common.