Data Unlocked: Setting Up The Right Legal Structure For B2B Data Sharing

As with any commercial relationship, an agreement between two or more businesses to share data has the potential to go wrong. One party might infringe the other's rights over the data or breach the terms and conditions of its use; data might be lost, stolen or otherwise misused; the use of shared data might breach data protection rules; or the exchange of commercially sensitive information could raise competition concerns.

It is therefore essential that parties entering a business-to-business (B2B) data sharing initiative make sure that their legal rights and responsibilities are defined and protected. B2B data sharing is a relatively new field, however, and - unlike the use of personal data - there are few laws that explicitly govern the subject matter of "data".