Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

A charitable entity can hold trademarks without placing any products on the market. Heck, a company can make money selling components that are not considered to be "products on the market", since they are not, per the definition of "product" for the purposes of EU acquis, selling a product - they're selling a component of a product, and are thus exempted from most product safety regulations (as an example).

So, for example, I can sell a seatbelt tensioner in the EU market without "putting a product on the market", since the seatbelt tensioner is not considered a product; it's considered a "component of a product". If Volkswagen AG buy my component and integrate it into a product, they take on liability if my component fails to perform as promised; they almost certainly push that liability back onto me contractually, since they don't want to pay the penalties if I deliver crap.

Now, some EU states take different views on this to others; Germany, for example, makes it very difficult to sell something without "putting a product on the market". But the core principle is already present; when something is transferred to another business in a sufficiently incomplete state, it's no longer a "product", but a "component of a product", and liability can be disclaimed in the contract governing that transfer. Once you assemble a product (and everything sold to consumers is a product), you've got liability to worry about.