Raw data are not covered by IPR, while curated database are.

It is not clear who owns the raw data, across different sectors of the economy. As a farmer, data gathered by tractors are managed by the tractor provider, but who owns them? As a bank, data on ATMs technical functioning are managed by the ATM machine builder. As a consumer, data on my banking transaction are managed by the bank. And so on…

But property rights are the basis of capitalism. If you don’t establish ownership, you can’t buy and sell stuff.

So if it’s not clear who owns the data, then they will be not shared or sold or reused. Unless of course they are totally open data.

Interestingly, a similar problem is happening in science. One of the main barrier for scientists to share data is that there is no established format for data citation (as opposite to publication citation) and no practical application of it, so they will not gain but only loose by sharing data.