The Licensing Corner

JAY PARKHILL
Parkhill Venture Counsel, P.C.

EU DIGITAL RULEBOOK AND DIGITAL OMNIBUS LEGISLATION

IN THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN DIGITAL ERA there was GDPR, and that was welcomed in many quarters because it brought up to date a then 20-year-old law regarding personal data processing. GDPR introduced several principles that quickly became global standards, and EU lawmakers saw themselves at the vanguard of digital rights protection.

Since GDPR came into force in 2018, the EU has been active in developing new laws covering a variety of digital activities. AI regulation has received the most attention recently but EU legislators have enacted several pieces of important legislation, all seemingly intended both to put the EU at the forefront of consumer protection, as well as to create an environment in which European tech companies can grow. The result has been a rapid accretion of legal obligations that can be hard to track and which in some cases overlap. Recognizing this, the European Commission is currently working on a framework it calls the "digital package." One of several policy documents developed under the EU’s digital strategy program, the digital package is intended to harmonize and streamline a number of regulatory frameworks. Here, then, is a short summary of existing EU legislation along with the proposed digital package and its anticipated effect on existing legislation.