Abstract

This article argues for the importance of developing property law rules for data that could be commonly applied to both personal and non-personal information. The basic argument of this article is that the rules of property law should be applied to transactions of data like those of other properties. However, instead of focusing on ownership as the exclusive right to data, as the conventional arguments about data ownership suggest, this article considers the content of property law that is more suited to the nature of data. First, the concept of data, information and data carrier will be examined. When considering the application of property law to data, it is important to distinguish these three concepts. Then, this article examines conventional opinions on the application of property law to data. Different from the conventional views, this article argues for applying property law rules to data transactions with some modifications reflecting the nature of data transactions. Considering that multiple parties are closely related to data, it is appropriate to focus on co-ownership in which multiple parties have rights to the same property at the same time, rather than focusing on ownership in which a single party has exclusive rights, and to consider the content of property rights that is suitable for the nature of data. Finally, the appropriateness of the application of property law rules is evaluated in some typical cases.