53. What is the difference between exportable data and digital assets? What do these concepts mean?

According to Article 2(38) of the Data Act, the concept of “exportable data” covers input and output data. It also includes metadata directly or indirectly generated, or co-generated, by the customer’s use of the respective data processing service. These concepts exclude data protected as intellectual property and trade secrets of the provider or a third party. “Digital assets” are defined in Article 2(32). They are elements that the customer needs in order to be able to effectively use their data in the environment of a new service provider to which they have switched. Digital assets therefore cover other types of metadata, for example those related to the configuration of settings, security and access and control rights management. Applications as well as virtualisation technologies (e.g. virtual machines and containers) can also count as digital assets. As part of the switching process, digital assets can be ported from a source provider to a destination provider if the customer has the right to use these assets, independent from their contractual relationship with the provider of data processing service that the customer intends to switch from.