--- title: The EU just made your product data portable | Xferdata description: From 12 September 2026, connected products sold in the EU must hand users their data free and machine-readable. That is also the first thing a data buyer tests. image: https://www.xferdata.com/hubfs/xferdata-blog-p6-eu-data-act.png --- [XFERDATA](https://www.xferdata.com/) [For owners](https://www.xferdata.com/owners) [For buyers](https://www.xferdata.com/buyers) [Blog](https://www.xferdata.com/blog) [Contact](https://www.xferdata.com/contact) [Get a valuation](https://app.prod.xferdata.com/auth/login?src=nav-valuation) ![From September 12 2026 users can ask for the data your connected product generates](https://www.xferdata.com/hubfs/xferdata-blog-p6-eu-data-act.png) # The EU just made your product data portable Xferdata  ·  Oct 7, 2026, 9:00:00 AM If you sell a connected product or a service attached to one anywhere in the EU, a deadline landed on 12 September 2026 that changes who can ask for the data your product generates. The EU Data Act became applicable a year earlier, on 12 September 2025. That first phase gave users a right to request the data their use of a product generates. The second phase is the harder one. From September 2026, connected products and related services placed on the market must be designed so that the data is, by default, easily and directly accessible to the user, free of charge, and in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Access by design, rather than access on request. You cannot answer it with a support ticket and a CSV six weeks later. ## Why this matters to you even if you are not in scope Most companies reading this do not sell a connected product. It still matters, for two reasons. The first is direction of travel. The default assumption in law is moving from the company holding the data to the user generating it. Where that lands, contracts follow, and the question of who may license what stops being something you can leave vague. The second is more immediate. The engineering work the Data Act forces is almost exactly the work a data buyer asks for before they will bid. ## Extractability is the first thing a buyer tests When a dataset goes to auction, the earliest failure point is rarely the value of the data. It is whether the data can leave the system it lives in, cleanly, repeatedly, and in a form somebody outside your company can read. A buyer wants a structured export, stable field names, a documented schema, and a refresh they can rely on. Access by design requires a structured export, stable field names, a documented schema, and a mechanism that keeps working. These are the same requirement wearing different clothes. Companies that have done this work discover their data is licensable. Companies that have not usually discover, at the worst moment, that a decade of history is only reachable through a reporting screen designed for one person to read one page at a time. ## What to do with the work once it is done If you are in scope, you are spending the money anyway. The question worth asking is whether the output is a compliance artifact that satisfies a regulator, or an asset you can also take to market. The difference is small and mostly documentary: knowing where each field came from, whether it was captured or derived, what your terms permit you to do with it, and which counterparties have a say. That is the same list a buyer will work through, and doing it once serves both purposes. If you are not in scope, the deadline is still a useful prompt. Try to get five years of your own operational history out of your systems in a structured file this week. Whatever that exercise costs you is what a buyer would have run into, and it is better to find out now. ## This is the market we run Xferdata values a company's data, builds the auction pack, and runs the auction to buyers globally. **If you own the data**, run a valuation and find out what yours is worth. **If you buy data**, sign up and tell us what you are after. You will see packs as they come to market. [Sign up to Xferdata](https://app.prod.xferdata.com/auth/login?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=data_auctions_2026q4&utm_content=eu_data_act_portable) © 2026 Xferdata, Inc. All rights reserved. [For owners](https://www.xferdata.com/owners) [For buyers](https://www.xferdata.com/buyers) [Blog](https://www.xferdata.com/blog) [Contact](https://www.xferdata.com/contact) [Privacy](https://www.xferdata.com/privacy) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/xferdata) × Loading calendar… ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Xferdata", "url" : "https://www.xferdata.com/blog/author/xferdata" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-07T13:00:00.412Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-07T13:00:00.000Z", "headline" : "The EU just made your product data portable", "image" : [ "https://www.xferdata.com/hubfs/xferdata-blog-p6-eu-data-act.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://www.xferdata.com/blog/the-eu-just-made-your-product-data-portable", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://www.xferdata.com/hubfs/Brand%20Logos/xferdata-logo-navy-blue.svg" }, "name" : "Xferdata" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "Organization", "description" : "Xferdata values enterprise data assets and runs competitive auctions in which institutional buyers license them.", "email" : "info@xferdata.com", "logo" : "https://47529209.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/47529209/xferdata-favicon.png", "name" : "Xferdata", "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/xferdata" ], "url" : "https://www.xferdata.com" } ```