Demonopolizing the European Public Domain – Open Future

"This research report was written by students of the Glushko & Samuelson Information Law and Policy (ILP) Lab at the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam in collaboration with Open Future. In April of this year, Open Future approached the ILP Lab to take a closer look at the legal status of the datasets produced by the European participants in the Google Books project.

The background to this request stems from the observation that, in the context of generative AI emerging as a new technological paradigm, Google’s exclusive access to a large part of the European public domain is likely to give it a significant competitive advantage. Such an outcome is difficult to reconcile with both the public domain status of these collections and policies aimed at providing a level playing field for smaller and European AI developers. Against the background, the report provides an analysis of the exclusivity clauses and their relationship to the relevant provisions in the 2019 Open Data Directive that seek to limit such arrangements...."