Intellectual property rights in the era of Italian “artificial” public decisions: time to collapse?

Abstract

Considering that the Public Administration may not be able to internally develop the technologies necessary for its digital transformation process, having to procure them on the private market, the exclusivity of copy-right could affirm an unprecedented dominance of private operators over the entire public decision-making process. On the other hand, claiming the right to reveal the source code of the algorithm constitutes a guarantee of transparency, freedom of information and civic engagement, in line with Open Government policies. Leaving aside the legal debate about the qualification of the source code as an administrative act, which recently took place in Italy, this work aims to investigate the morphology of intellectual property in the era of algorithmic Administration in order to understand whether intellectual property rights should, or not, to succumb whenever it is necessary to choose, acquire and use information technology to carry out administrative activities.