How long must a product passport stay readable?
For the period the act sets, which Article 9 requires to correspond to at least the expected lifetime of the product, and which Article 11 extends past an insolvency, a liquidation or a cessation of activity. The tag, the address and the server all have to last that long.
The period the text sets
Article 9 of regulation (EU) 2024/1781 lists, among the things a delegated act specifies, the period during which the passport is to remain available, and requires it to correspond to at least the expected lifetime of a specific product. The floor is the product, not the campaign or the warranty.
Article 11 then removes the obvious escape: availability continues for that period including after an insolvency, a liquidation or a cessation of activity in the Union of the operator responsible for creating the passport. The hosting page covers the back up copy that makes this possible.
What it asks of the tag
A carrier that stops being readable ends the passport as surely as a dead server. For a printed symbol that means abrasion, sunlight and dirt; for a tag it means the chip, the antenna and the bond surviving the product's life, which the tag lifespan page takes apart, and the environment it lives in, which the shelf life page covers for storage.
It also means resisting the states that make a tag useless without breaking it: a memory rewritten by someone else, or locked by accident. The protections and their costs are in the protection page, and the decision belongs to the design rather than to the production line.
What it asks of the address
An identifier that resolves for a decade is a commitment about a domain, a resolver and a redirect policy. The preparation page makes the general case for pointing tags at an address you control and can redirect; a passport turns that habit into a requirement that survives your company.
The practical form is a stable identifier behind a stable address, with the destination free to change. Anything that puts a campaign, a season or a product name in the address is a promise the object will outlive.
Planning for a decade
Write down who renews the domain, who pays the provider, and what happens when the product line is discontinued. Those three answers are what the availability requirement really asks for, and none of them is a technical problem.
Then check that the answers survive a change of ownership or of supplier, since a decade of availability outlasts most contracts signed at launch.
Frequently asked questions
How long exactly?
The act for the product group sets the period, and the regulation requires it to correspond to at least the expected lifetime of the product.
What if the company closes?
Availability continues through the period, including after an insolvency, a liquidation or a cessation of activity in the Union.
Does the tag have to last as long?
The carrier has to stay readable, so yes in practice: a passport nobody can reach is a passport that is not available.
What is the safest address to carry?
A stable identifier on a domain you control, with the destination free to change. Anything naming a campaign or a season ages faster than the product.