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fliptop [soylentnews.org] writes:

Jo Best at ZDNet asks [zdnet.com]:

In a world where more and more objects are coming online and vendors are getting involved in the supply chain, how can you keep track of what's yours and what's not?

[...] Data gathered by IoT sensors and systems can pass through any number of hands -- those of the end-user that creates it, or of the company whose hardware collects it, even the software business the processes it, and the app maker that shares it, and all of them may want to claim rights over it. Whether you're part of a company wanting to improve their business with industrial internet systems or an individual planning to make their home a little smarter with IoT, whose data is it anyway?

According to law firm Taylor Wessing [taylorwessing.com], end users don't really have ownership rights to the data gathered by off-the-shelf systems they've installed. If you've rolled out a smart home set-up, you can't legitimately claim that all the details about when you switched on your lights or opened your garage belong to you and you alone.

However, in Europe, companies that have spent time and money creating a fixed database that they can query could legitimately claim to have ownership of that data. If more than one company has had a hand in building that database, though, all may be able to claim ownership and then use it in their business contracts. "Where ownership has not been appropriately provided for, we can expect to see big disputes between those involved, given the potential value in data captured from the IoT," Taylor Wessing senior associate Adam Rendle noted in a blog [taylorwessing.com].

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