As we recently discussed when detailing the functions of the DPP Registry, the central European registry acts solely as the location index for passports. The real operational challenge for your organization begins afterwards: ensuring that lifecycle data can be shared between suppliers and customers in an interoperable, reliable manner and under strict governance conditions.

Facing the implementation timeline of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), your company has two paths: postpone the decision and end up implementing rushed solutions that function as a mere cost center, or seize this requirement to build a comprehensive industrial data strategy. To guide this shift in approach, BAIDATA and Innovalia Association have participated as co-authors in the whitepaper “Building the Trusted Internet of Product Data for Digital Product Passport Ecosystems”, published as part of the European project CIRPASS-2. The document shows how the passport is, in fact, the first large-scale application of a new paradigm: the Internet of Product Data (IoPD).

What is the Digital Product Passport (DPP) and why does it go beyond regulatory compliance?

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a structured digital record that compiles information on the composition, origin, environmental impact, durability and end-of-life options of a physical asset. Its initial purpose, set by the European Union, addresses two priority objectives: enabling market surveillance by the authorities and providing traceability to consumers.

The mistake is to treat the passport as a static document silo or a bureaucratic formality. The DPP goes much further, because it aims to be a living document, updated throughout the product’s lifecycle. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed a model for prioritizing technical information, distinguishing between essential, recommended and voluntary data so as not to technically overwhelm companies.

Once those data requirements are set down on paper, the real operational challenge arises: building a B2B infrastructure where sharing that information does not expose your competitive advantages or your intellectual property.

From regulatory obligation to industrial return: the Beyond Compliance approach

Going beyond regulatory compliance means understanding the DPP as the trigger for deploying the Internet of Product Data (IoPD). Unlike traditional IoT systems, which focus on telemetry from closed devices, or monolithic commercial platforms that store technical datasheets on third-party servers, the IoPD decouples the visual applications from the underlying data-exchange infrastructure.

Under this approach, the product passport is the starting point for unlocking new business returns:

• Circular models and servitization (Product-as-a-Service): Integrating design data and maintenance records makes it possible to monitor performance on the plant floor, bill by usage and optimize aftersales service contracts.
• High-value recovery and recycling: Dismantlers and recyclers gain access to verified chemical compositions and disassembly sequences, improving the sorting of secondary materials without destructive testing.
• Readiness for industrial artificial intelligence: Having structured, verifiable information at the source lays the technical foundation for training remaining useful life (RUL) prediction algorithms and optimizing multi-tier supply chains without revealing confidential data.

Three critical challenges for deploying the Internet of Product Data (IoPD)

Digitizing technical datasheets or uploading files to isolated repositories does not build a scalable model. The technical paper identifies three bottlenecks that you must resolve in your data infrastructure:

To take advantage of this potential, it is not enough to digitize product information. It is necessary to ensure that data can be shared securely, interpreted correctly and trusted by all the organizations involved. In this regard, three fundamental challenges are identified for moving toward a product data ecosystem at scale:

1. Industrial data governance and sovereignty

Sharing information creates value, but it requires safeguarding trade secrets, bills of materials (BOMs) and manufacturing margins. It is essential to apply usage policies that are automatically enforceable at the attribute level, ensuring that you decide who accesses each piece of data, for what specific purpose and for how long, without losing control of the information.

2. Semantic interoperability in multi-tier supply chains

Corporate systems (ERP, MES, PLM) operate with disparate schemas and formats. To avoid custom point-to-point developments between customers and suppliers, data must contain standardized descriptions that any software can interpret unambiguously.

3. Decentralized trust, provenance and legal accountability

Organizations need to verify the legal identity of their counterparties and the provenance of the data they receive. Without cryptographic evidence of origin, the risk of impersonation, leakage of sensitive data and legal exposure from unsubstantiated environmental claims (greenwashing) increases.

The trust architecture: Data Spaces, Asset Administration Shell (AAS) and European Business Wallets (EBW)

To address these challenges without imposing centralized proprietary platforms, the architectural model proposed by CIRPASS-2 combines three complementary components:

• Data Spaces as B2B infrastructure: They provide the decentralized governance framework. Through connectors based on open standards, such as Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) and the Dataspace Protocol (DSP), information remains on the data owner’s servers and is transferred peer-to-peer only after evaluating contracts formalized through ODRL policies.
• Asset Administration Shells (AAS) as the semantic model: The standardized structure under the IEC 63278 standard makes it possible to organize industrial digital twin information into modular submodels. As we covered when reviewing the submodel for the DPP published by IDTA, tools such as the DppMetadata specification make it possible to encapsulate identifiers and regulations in a standardized way.
• European Business Wallets (EBW) for verifiable identity: Under the European eIDAS 2.0 regulation and the use of Verifiable Credentials (VCs), business digital wallets make it possible to prove an organization’s identity and issue qualified electronic seals (e-Seals) on each product declaration.

This setup ensures that data travels governed by usage contracts, structured in a format interpretable by any agent in the chain and backed by auditable identities.

Practical use cases: From textiles to semiconductors and mobility

The whitepaper validates this approach through industrial implementations in various sectors:

• Tire sector (GDSO and CIRPASS-2): End-to-end traceability throughout the lifecycle, linking retreading, maintenance and recycling events through GS1 SGTIN identifiers and RFID tags embedded in the tire.
• Textile chain (SAGE, SM4RTENANCE and CIRPASS-2 projects): Practical application of the “collect once, use many times” model, allowing SME spinners and weavers to share composition and environmental footprint data with multiple customers through a single connector, without duplicating manual questionnaires.
• Battery passport: Reference model presented at Hannover Messe 2026 together with the International Manufacturing-X Council (IMXC), connecting operational data across Catena-X, Factory-X and Semiconductor-X. To explore this area further, see our analysis of the demonstrator.
• Semiconductors and electronics (Semiconductor-X): Deployment of Zero Trust architectures with three criticality levels to protect the intellectual property of cleanroom processes while certifying the product carbon footprint (PCF) to equipment manufacturers.

BAIDATA’s role in the European standardization of sovereign data

The whitepaper “Building the Trusted Internet of Product Data for Digital Product Passport Ecosystems” confirms the contribution of BAIDATA and Innovalia Association to the main European interoperability standards, in close collaboration with initiatives such as the Data Spaces Support Centre (DSSC).

The Digital Product Passport will be mandatory, but the return it generates on your bottom line depends on the technical model you choose. Designing your infrastructure on data spaces ensures that the investment made today serves to lead the circular value chains of the coming years.