Licensing Open Government Data

TL;DR

This paper examines legal issues and policy considerations in licensing open government data, emphasizing the importance of license design aligned with government IP laws and policy goals.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of open data licenses and discusses how governments should tailor licenses to their specific IP regimes and policy objectives.

Findings

Licenses reflect policy considerations distinct from commercial or commons licenses.

Legal ambiguity exists around the status of open government data.

Government should adapt licenses to their IP laws and policy goals.

Abstract

This article focuses on the legal issues associated with open government data licenses. This study compares current open data licenses and argues that licensing terms reflect policy considerations, which are quite different from those contemplated in business transactions or shared in typical commons communities. This article investigates the ambiguous legal status of data together with the new wave of open government data, which concerns some fundamental intellectual property (IP) questions not covered by, or analyzed in depth in, the current literature. Moreover, this study suggests that government should choose or adapt open data licenses according to their own IP regimes. In the end, this article argues that the design or choice of open government data license forms an important element of information policy; government, therefore, should make this decision in accordance with their policy goals and in compliance with their own jurisdictions' IP laws.