The Laws of Big Data

This paper presents a selection of legal topics in the context of data analytics and Big Data from a lawyer’s perspective. After introducing the reader to the role of law, both in the analogue and the digital world (1), the paper gives a systematic overview of some of the currently most relevant data-related legal topics (2). While digitalisation and data processing poses new questions to all areas of law, this paper focusses on the role Big Data plays in competition, data protection and contract law, as those are closely interlinked and address similar data-related phenomena. The paper was written from a mainly European perspective and presents some specific approaches European law takes to address the challenges we face with the advent of Big Data.