Designing Competitive Markets for Industrial Data – Between Propertisation and Access Drexl Josef As part of the project to establish a Digital Single Market, the European Commission has launched a ‘Free Flow of Data’ initiative. This initiative is meant to enhance the growth potential of the emerging data economy, which is characterised by the digitisation of production (smart factories) and the advent of digitised products such as smart—driverless—cars, or smart wearables that will be able to communicate with each other and the environment through the Internet of Things. Furthermore, the enormous amount of data generated and controlled by the industry could serve as a most valuable input for other new data-driven services and for applications in the public interest, such as the operation of smart cities, smart and resource-efficient farming, or measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Obviously, this new data economy has to rely on the commercialisation of data. But what kind of regulation is needed in order to make the data economy work? Do we need new ownership rights in data? Or should regulation focus on access in order to make data as widely available as possible? The European Commission is currently trying to formulate answers to these questions. This article aims to assist the Commission by working on a pro-competitive framework for issues of both ownership and access.** In so doing, this article undertakes two things: first, it analyses to what extent intellectual property laws already provide control over data and then discusses the need and justification for introducing new rules on data ownership. Second, it analyses whether EU competition law already provides remedies to promote access to data, and furthermore explores whether and under which conditions the introduction of new access regimes would be advisable. This article is to be considered as on-going research. It does not yet take into account more recent developments in 2017. Data ownership EU competition law Internet of Things access to data data analytics data economy data portability data sharing data-driven economy database rights essential facilities refusal to license trade secrets protection 340 periodical academic journal JIPITEC 8 4 2017 257 292 2190-3387 urn:nbn:de:0009-29-46365 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0009-29-46365 drexl2017