Högre seminarium i offentlig rätt den 16 december: A Digital Right to Repair?

“A European Green Deal” and “A Europe fit for the digital age” are top prioritized fields by the European Commission in 2019-24, and both are currently characterized by a high level of legislative activity. However, combining resource-efficiency and climate neutrality with an intensive and innovative digital economy is not always obvious. Currently e-waste is the fastest growing waste stream globally. To mitigate the negative environmental impact e-waste has on the environment, there has been an increased interest for what has become known as a Right to Repair (R2R). What would it take to create an economy where electronic devices that are defective or outdated are not so easily discarded? At EU level there is a range of legislative initiatives that try to stimulate the hardware repair of electronic devices. However, given that an ever-increasing group of electronic devices is becoming connected and “smart”, in order for R2R to have real bite, it should not only concern material (screws, batteries, etc.) repair but also digital (software) repair, patching and updating. Digital repair, however, is a conceptually and practically complex aspect of the R2R. It is relatively straightforward to create legislation that forces a manufacturer to design products that are easier to repair and to provide consumers with spare parts and instruction manuals about hardware repair. It is more complex to come up with legislation that incentivizes the updating of electronic products in terms of software – here we get into complex interactions with intellectual property, data protection and cyber security rights. During this seminar I discuss how the proposed Data Act and the proposed updated Product Liability Directive try to promote digital repair.