Quis Custodiet IP-sos Algorithmos?

Compliance obligations imposed by the Digital Markets Act and general competition law frequently require the employment of algorithmic software, especially where they address the handling of data. Such algorithmic software must, itself, be controlled for compliance through audits. Auditing algorithms will, hence, become a major part of future law enforcement. This is true not only for the DMA and general competition law, but also for many other areas, such as AI risk regulation or the responsibilities of digital service providers. Through comparative benchmarking across legislative areas and systematical interpretation, this contribution tries to identify key features of an appropriate algo auditing regime for competition-related obligations and discusses how they could be established, in particular, under the DMA. Such features include lifecycle stages at which algorithms should be audited, the appropriate legal bases for the audits, methodologies and agents as well as compliance assessment parameters and the possibility for safe harbors. The contribution also briefly highlights that IP and data protection rules may require modification to allow for appropriate algo auditing.