The EU Data Act effective from 12th September 2025 has a unique provision under Article 3. This article states
3. Any undertaking designated as a gatekeeper, pursuant to Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, shall not be an eligible third party under this Article and therefore shall not:
(a) solicit or commercially incentivise a user in any manner, including by providing monetary or any other compensation, to make data available to one of its services that the user has obtained pursuant to a request under Article 4(1);
(b) solicit or commercially incentivise a user to request the data holder to make data available to one of its services pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Article;
(c) receive data from a user that the user has obtained pursuant to a request under Article 4(1).
The definition of “Gate keeper” is picked from the Digital Market Act and applies to large online platforms having significant impact. It has turnover and reach criteria. In September 2023, EU designated six entities as Gatekeepers which are Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Tiktok.
Hence the above provision of the Act applies to these six entities.
Note that these entities or not expected to “Commercially incentivise a user in any manner” to make data available for use. This also means that in respect of personal data, they cannot obtain a valid “Consent” for such data.
Data which comes under the scope of DMA is the data generated by an online platform and includes the profiling data generated by these entities. It is inclusive of the “Transactional data” on which the entity may have a legal right.
These provisions may mean that data such as generated by Google Maps may not be available for sharing by Google. In principle this sort of provision is part of the “Completion Act” in India and could affect many other “Platforms” having significant presence. It is to be seen if this could affect the web scrapping services used with permission on platforms such as X or Linked-In.
In India Competition Act is the relevant act which could define the large platforms as “Dominant Companies” and Competition Commission of India has the right to review market situation from time to time and declare the dominant status of companies.
Now, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) needs to take a look at the combined effect of EU Data Use Act and DMA and review if it has to have similar provisions in India when DPDPA 2023 is notified.
Naavi
