The Civil-Law Regime Governing Smart Transportation Data

This article examines the civil-law regime governing data generated and used within smart transportation systems as an element of smart-city infrastructure. It considers the transformation of a vehicle from a traditional tangible object into an integrated hardware-and-software system that simultaneously generates substantial volumes of technical, geolocation, personal, infrastructure-related, and derived data. The article analyzes the place of such data within the system of objects of civil rights and demonstrates the limited applicability of both the property-law model and the framework of exclusive rights to such data. Particular attention is given to the allocation of legal entitlements among the vehicle owner, user, manufacturer, digital-platform operator, service providers, and public authorities. The article examines contractual mechanisms governing transactions involving transportation data, as well as their limitations arising from the data holder's technological control. Drawing on Russian legislation, foreign scholarship, and European regulatory approaches, the article supports a shift from a concept of data ownership to a data-access model. It also considers whether urban data should be recognized as an autonomous legal category. The article proposes a model of functionally distributed control, distinguishing between the data source and the data holder, the person entitled to access data and the purpose of access, the permitted means of using information, and statutory restrictions. It concludes that Russian civil law should develop specialized mechanisms for access to data rather than establish a universal absolute right in data.