HSE Researchers Provide the World’s First Legal Definition of a Digital Ecosystem
Digital ecosystems have evolved from a technological innovation into a fundamental institution of the modern economy over the past few years. According to HSE University’s latest estimates, they account for 8.5% of Russia’s GDP. Previously, no jurisdiction had a statutory definition of what constitutes a digital ecosystem. HSE University researchers have addressed this gap by proposing the first legal concept of a digital ecosystem. Their article, ‘The Digital Ecosystem as a Novel Economic Phenomenon and Legal Concept,’ has been published in the BRICS Law Journal.
The study’s authors—Yaroslav Kuzminov, Alexey Koshel, Ekaterina Kruchinskaia, and Salambek Dombaev—are the first to formulate five operational characteristics of a digital ecosystem that are suitable for legal codification. These include the use of technologies and algorithms; the presence of two or more product or service categories; multiple legal entities operating as a corporate group or through contractual partnerships; a single consolidated user database; and the creation of additional consumer value through participation in the ecosystem.
Together, these five characteristics define the core sources of value that digital ecosystems both create and capture: technologies that enable seamless interaction; data that underpins analysis of user behaviour; and simplified user experience and consumer choice resulting from the combination of these two elements.
On this basis, the researchers propose a legal definition of a digital ecosystem: a digital platform, or a set of technologically and organisationally interconnected digital platforms, that enables users to obtain additional consumer value when purchasing goods, works, or services within the ecosystem through the use of a consolidated user database, technological and organisational solutions.
Organisational solutions include a unified authentication system and a single system of bonuses and customer preferences, while technological solutions consist of algorithms that simplify consumer choice and reduce the time or costs associated with making purchases compared with buying the same goods or services outside the ecosystem.
From an economic perspective, a digital ecosystem performs an infrastructural function by providing participants with access to a shared database, unified interfaces, and standardised rules of interaction. This dramatically reduces transaction costs and generates network effects for all participants. The proposed definition also draws, for the first time, a clear distinction between a digital ecosystem and related phenomena. A sophisticated digital platform is essentially a technological aggregation of services typically operated by a single legal entity. A digital ecosystem, by contrast, consists of multiple legally or organisationally distinct entities—either companies within a corporate group or contractual partners—operating on the basis of a shared infrastructure. This distinction has direct practical implications for determining legal liability, the applicable tax regime, and the scope of antitrust regulation.
In Russia, where digital ecosystems are often built around banks, this distinction is particularly significant. Goods, financial flows, and personal data frequently circulate within the same ecosystem, while personal data may become intertwined with information protected by banking secrecy. Regulators therefore need a clear understanding of the legal nature of the entities involved in each specific case.
The authors note that the Russian experience offers valuable material for the international debate. The integration of financial and non-financial activities through a single consolidated database creates effects that have no direct equivalent in Western models and therefore require a distinct legal framework.
The study also identifies a number of unresolved issues, the most significant of which concerns data rights. Given that data represents the primary source of value in a digital ecosystem, the researchers argue that this issue should be addressed through a constructive and gradual dialogue between digital ecosystems and regulators. The first step should be to determine the value that users derive from a platform’s recommendation capabilities, and only then to begin discussing how platform data should be governed.
Building on the proposed definition and conceptual distinctions, the authors identify five priority areas for the further development of legal regulation: adapting competition law to reflect the specific nature of competition both within and between digital ecosystems; revising consumer protection rules to account for increasingly complex transactional models; developing mechanisms to protect information and personal data when they are consolidated and transferred across borders; establishing flexible tax regimes that reflect the distinctive revenue and cost structures of digital ecosystems; and adapting intellectual property and advertising regulations to the dynamic environment of algorithm-driven content distribution and personalised advertising.
The proposed definition and system of defining characteristics provide a foundation for moving beyond qualitative descriptions of digital ecosystems towards legally meaningful criteria that can be applied in regulatory and judicial practice. This does not mean that all regulatory challenges have been resolved. On the contrary, the authors emphasise that substantial work remains to adapt sector-specific legislation. However, this process can now proceed on the basis of a clear understanding of precisely what is to be regulated.
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