Innovation by Design: Strategic Public Procurement and the Normative Case for Public Ownership of IPRs in Open Data Policy

Innovation is widely recognised as a fundamental driver of economic development. As defined by the OECD Oslo Manual, innovation encompasses both an activity and its outcome, referring to new or significantly improved products, processes, or combinations thereof, implemented or made available to users. Innovation activities include the developmental, financial, and commercial efforts that lead to these outcomes. Within this broader conceptual framework, public procurement and open data policies have gained recognition as key instruments for fostering innovation in the European Union. The Public Procurement Directive urges Member States to make strategic use of public contracts to spur innovation, while the Open Data Directive highlights the role of accessible data in enabling new services and digital transformation. This article examines how these two legal regimes intersect and argues that public ownership of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in data-rich procurement outputs is essential for aligning procurement practices with the EU’s innovation and openness goals.