EU brings product liability rules in line with digital age and circular economy

Today [2024-10-10] the Council adopted a directive to update the EU’s civil liability law. The new liability rules better take into account that nowadays many products have digital features and that the economy is becoming increasingly circular.

  • metiulekm
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    IANAL nor intelligent, but after skimming the text of the directive I felt like the definition of damage is very limited. In particular, if I understand correctly:

    our business to lose this giant contract

    would not be covered by this directive, this directive is only about a human being hurt in some way,

    thousands of consumers left with bricked devices

    would be covered in case of “your game installs a kernel-level anticheat and the anticheat breaks PCs”, but not in the case of “you uploaded an upgrade to a firmware of the washing machine you produced and it bricked the machines”; the directive is not about a product breaking, but about the product breaking your health, other property or data,

    my washing machine to eat my dog

    is basically the exact case this directive covers.

    • timroerstroem@feddit.dkOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Thank you for the corrections, I think I maybe skimmed the text back when it went through the EP, so I was mostly going from (poor) memory.