Intellectual Property created out of the IPR laws and Personal Data as a property recognized out of a law like DPDPA has some interesting relationship.
IPR is associated with an author or an inventor and hence by default discloses the owner’s personal information. Personal Data as a property is a right of the data subject and the disclosure may be subject to the condition that it is held anonymous.
IPR transfer from one person to another is fairly well understood and a licensing mechanism works to ensure that the multiple sequential owners can exercise their rights and derive return on investment over their contribution to the value life cycle of the product.
On the other hand, the transfer of rights in Personal Data is as yet not mature. When X creates a profile document or a medical report or a financial report about P, while X can claim IPR on the creation of the intellectual property such as the profile or the report, the right of ownership may be claimed by the data subject. The creator of the Intellectual property may not have the right to disclose or distribute or use the creation unless the consent at the time of providing of the personal information permits such use.
In many cases the “Profile” or a “Report” represents a “discovery” of use and the consent mechanism except under a forward looking framework like DGPSI may not cover the new uses that the report generator can find.
Thus laws such as GDPR or DPDPA need to develop in such a manner that the IPR of the Data Fiduciary is properly recognized even for the purpose of “Monetization”.
This debate will be taken into the World Intellectual Property Forum annual convention which is happening at Bangalore.
