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White paperMichael Clark
From Service to Product
Under Directive (EU) 2024/2853, most predictive maintenance a manufacturer supplies is likely to be treated as a product: software is a product however supplied, and a related service within the manufacturer's control is a component of the machine. For products placed on the EU or Northern Ireland market after 8 December 2026, defect rules, court-ordered disclosure and five rebuttable presumptions make the manufacturer's records a major factor in injury claims. The first steps are to map the portfolio, read sales claims as statements about safety, and keep six records per prediction against the expiry periods.
Key findings
- Software is a product however it is supplied, and the related-service test decides whether a capability is part of the machine, not whether it is inside the regime.
- The Directive compensates people, not plant: a customer's damaged production line and lost output fall outside it, so the exposure is mainly to people injured when a machine fails.
- A conclusion that predictive maintenance is not high-risk under the AI Act settles nothing about product liability exposure.
In the paper
- Software is a product however it is supplied
- It compensates people, not plant
- The date and the windows
- The AI Act answer settles nothing here
- Why predictive maintenance is exposed
- Only a substantial modification starts a new period
- Records weigh heavily in the outcome
- The retention trap
Michael Clark
Chief Executive Officer, Standard Intelligence
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