/ Publications / Shall we share? The principle of FRAND in B2B data sharing
Working Paper
Shall we share? The principle of FRAND in B2B data sharing
18 April 2023
Authors: BOTTA, Marco
Data is often defined as the ‘oil’ of the 21st century economy: companies that successfully collect and
process a large amount of data can provide more personalized services to their customers, develop
new products, and reduce their production costs, thus becoming more competitive. Similarly, public
institutions can provide more personalized services to citizens if they can access a large dataset.
However, small firms and public institutions often cannot collect a sufficiently large amount of data
on their own, and via data sharing small firms and public institutions can access larger and more
diversified sets of data, thus boosting their efficiency. Despite its well-recognized benefits, several
technical, regulatory and economics obstacles currently limit the degree of data sharing.
This paper first discusses the market failures that currently limit data ‘access’ and ‘re-use’ – which
are jointly defined as ‘data sharing’. Secondly, the paper analyses the legislation recently adopted
by the European Union (EU) to foster Business2Business (B2B), Government2Business (G2B) and
Business2Government(B2G) data sharing, especially by comparing the terms of the compensation
that is provided by the EU legislation. Finally, the paper analyses the meanings of Fair, Reasonable
and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms in the context of the licensing of Standard Essential Patents
(SEPs) and access remedies in EU competition law, to draw some lessons on how the principle of
FRAND, in the context of B2B data sharing, is interpreted.
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