Data Portability Rights: Limits, Opportunities, and the Need for Going Beyond the Portability of Personal Data

This paper uses the example of data of connected cars for showing the difficulties of solving data access problems through data portability rights. Especially the privacy law-based data portability of Art. 20 GDPR proves insufficient for solving competition and innovation problems caused by data access problems, due to a too narrow definition of the scope of portable data and the need for additional complementary regulations for making data portability effective. Therefore, data portability rights outside of privacy laws, e.g. based upon the consumer data rights approach or in competition policy, can offer more flexible and effective solutions for fostering competition and innovation.

By Daniel Gill & Wolfgang Kerber¹

I. INTRODUCTION

In recent policy discussions data portability rights are often seen as a very promising instrument for solving problems for competition and innovation that are caused by a lack of access to data. Since the EU data protection law already introduced a data portability right (Art. 20 GDPR) in 2018, the European discussion focusses primarily on this data portability instrument for fostering competition and innovation. However, this right has not fulfilled these expectations so far, which has led to the current policy discussion in the EU on how this right can be made more effective.² But data portability rights can also be introduced outside of privacy laws, as, e.g. in the recent approach of consumer data rights, which intends to g