🏭 Manufacturers
What is a manufacturer?
The term Manufacturer is defined in Article 3(13) of the CRA:
‘manufacturer’ means a natural or legal person who develops or manufactures products with digital elements or has products with digital elements designed, developed or manufactured, and markets them under its name or trademark, whether for payment, monetisation or free of charge;
Can a manufacturer also be an open-source software steward?
Yes, a manufacturer can also be an open-source software steward.
This can happen whenever a manufacturer releases open source software and meets the requirements to be the open-source software steward of that project.
A manufacturer of commercial open source software can even be the open-source software steward of the community edition of the same project that it commercializes. In such a case, it has manufacturer obligations to its customers and steward obligations to the users of its community edition.
As a manufacturer, if I make a mistake or a security flaw is found in my project, will I get in trouble?
- If you fail to comply with the CRA, you will likely receive a letter or email from Market Surveillance Authorities asking you to address the issue.
- If you continue to fail to address the issue as a manufacturer, you could receive a fine. The fine will be proportional to the size of your organisation and how severely you broke the law.
- Microenterprises or small enterprises are exempted from fines relating to the obligation to notify authorities about vulnerabilities and severe incidents within 24 hours.