Empirical Law and Economy (ELE) has been merged into Digital Content Communities (DCC). The information below is thus outdated!

Empirical Law and Economy (ELE) research group studies societal topics that are related to other research themes at HIIT, i.e. emerging mobile and ubiquitous technologies, user-driven services, communities, open innovations, and so on. Especially in relation to future technologies, it is not enough to be able to apply only traditional jurisprudencial methods, but we must also collect and analyze empirical data.

Therefore, in addition to conventional legal studies that focus on the analysis of statutes, court cases, etc, we also seek to understand practices and business reasons, as well as availing of user studies that our colleagues accomplish to find real human, business, and societal needs. Likewise, futures research methods, e.g. user scenarios, may give us important information on forthcoming issues. In some cases, we are even able to set up experiments. One especially interesting area is to experiment legal and economic topics in virtual worlds.

The group consists of ten people: four doctors, three researchers and three research assistants. They are working in six research projects. The current research topics of interest are:

• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), especially copyright, software patents, and database protection
• Creative Commons, and the other forms of licensing open content and open source software
• Privacy and data protection especially in relation to emerging ambient intelligence (AmI) applications and services
• Legal consequences of moving from goods and products towards ubiquitous user-driven services
• Virtual economies, applying economics and business studies in virtual worlds, including virtual consumerism

ELE is led by Dr. Olli Pitkänen. For any inquires, please contact olli.pitkanen(a)hiit.fi.

The group continues the work of the former Digital Economy Group.