How does the CRA handle products that have been manufactured according to a customer's specifications?
Wie geht der CRA mit Produkten um, die nach Kundenspezifikationen hergestellt wurden?
Answer:
Tailor-made Systems/ Contract development
A product with digital elements is to be considered tailor-made only if:
it is fitted to a particular purpose, and
for a particular business user (cf. Recital 64).
As per Recital 64, the CRA opens up the possibility for the manufacturer and the business user to "explicitly agree … to a different set of contractual terms" for tailor-made products. To what extent this covers the entirety of contract development is not yet clear. The question is of particular interest in regard to the differentiation whether
a contract development is to be considered as developed by an independent contractor, or
whether it is a contract development developed by a party that serves as a purely organizational outsourcing of the client’s own development capacities (i.e. an extended workbench scenario), but can be attributed to the commissioning company as its own development.
This however it not yet clear, as the CRA does not consider such a differentiation and will have to be specified by the European Commission. Nevertheless, the definition of product with digital elements remains the same.
Most recent content update of this FAQ: September 2025
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