If the party that technically hosts your mattress passport ceases operations — through an acquisition, bankruptcy, or simply discontinuing a service — the obligation to have a functioning passport does not disappear. The QR code on your mattress remains there, but if the server behind that code is shut down, the code leads nowhere. For the manufacturer, importer, or brand owner who placed the model on the market, this can mean that a mattress without an accessible passport sits on shelves or with the customer, even though that party has not changed anything themselves.
The regulation places responsibility for an available passport with the economic operator, not with the software company that provides it technically. This distinction is important: whoever had the passport created remains accountable if it no longer works, even when the cause lies with an external supplier. Whether and how a supervisory authority responds to this in a specific case cannot be predicted and depends on the circumstances; for this, the official text of the regulation or the competent supervisory authority is the correct source, not this article.
Why this risk is often underestimated
With most product passports, people mainly think about the moment of delivery: the data has been collected, the QR code has been printed, the mattress goes out the door. What happens afterwards with the underlying infrastructure receives less attention, while the passport must actually continue to work for years — with mattresses, it is a product that often remains in use for a long time, for example in hotels or in rental situations. A supplier that stops after a few years, changes name, or scales down service is not a hypothetical scenario but something that occurs regularly in the software world.
Who remains responsible
The regulation distinguishes between the role of the manufacturer, importer, or distributor on the one hand and the technical service provider on the other. The latter is generally not a party that the regulation addresses directly; responsibility for a functioning passport lies with whoever has placed the product on the market. This means that a hosting company stopping does not automatically remove your company's obligations. Who exactly fulfills which role and what duties come with it is explained in the explanation per role in the supply chain.
What you can establish in advance
Because responsibility remains with your company, it is worthwhile to make agreements with a software supplier about continuity when entering into a contract: can you export the data, does the QR code remain accessible when switching, and what happens with hosting if the supplier stops or is taken over. These are questions that belong in the purchasing conversation, not only when something actually changes. With a few questions that show where you stand now you get a first indication of what is relevant for your situation, without this replacing legal advice.
How this is handled in practice
Some providers of a digital product passport establish a hosting period that is independent of their own business operations, precisely to limit this risk. Matrapas.eu, for example, hosts the passport for a fixed period of ten years and supplies the QR data carrier itself, so that continuity does not depend on loose agreements made afterwards. How that approach works exactly and where the underlying data comes from is described on the page on how the passport is compiled and hosted.
What a supervisory authority can do
Market surveillance can, just like with other product rules, check whether a product passport is actually accessible at the moment there is reason to do so. Supervisory authorities look at the availability of the information, not at the question of who is technically responsible for the server. How strictly this will be checked in practice and whether this differs per EU country cannot be said with certainty at this moment; what is already known about this is kept track of in the collected questions about market surveillance and enforcement.
Would you like to know how your own situation relates to these risks, without needing a lawyer right away? Take the free quick-scan or read the other topics in the knowledge bank — both provide an initial, non-binding overview of where you stand.