Cooley’s international products team is pleased to present a live version of its popular blog “Productwise” where leading product liability and compliance practitioners will bring you up to speed on 4 of the hottest topics in international product regulation. Intended to be short, snappy and high energy, the Cooley team will help breakdown and demystify some of the biggest news items we’re seeing in the industry, helping set you up to make the best of ICPHSO International Symposium 2021.

The EU law and the EN standards provide guidelines and tests that can be used to evaluate the safety of products. For some products, such as toys, there are specific requirements, whereas other products, such as furniture, rely on more generic provisions and certain aspects and risks are not covered. This session will explore the fire safety of furniture within the context of the revision of the General Product Safety Directive and the Sustainable Products Initiative.

Update from ICPHSO's President and Planning Chair.

As well as transforming the very nature of a wide array of products that form a part of consumers’ everyday lives, technology is also significantly changing the way that consumers buy and take delivery of products. As a result, a host of new pieces of EU legislation are beginning to provide for a product safety regime that takes full account of the increasing digitization and globalization of consumer behavior. This session will provide a closer look at some of the key pieces of legislation being implemented at EU level over the course of the next 3 years to account for these changes. These include the following: the proposed General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR); the Market Surveillance Regulation (MSR); and the proposed AI Regulation.

This session will present different strategies and opportunities for approaching product compliance and safety at scale. All actors in the value chain can play a role to enable product safety, from manufacturers, retailers, market surveillance, and other stakeholders. We aim to explore how different product safety initiatives can have the greatest reach and impact, in particular considering new product innovations, different ways consumer’s access and interact with products, and how products can be available to consumers in multiple jurisdictions.

The international product safety landscape is rapidly shifting. This fast moving landscape poses challenges for product manufacturers in an increasingly global marketplace. This session will look at the global trends in product safety focussing on developments in the EU, UK and US, and international policy that shapes this landscape to help manufacturers anticipate and plan for what comes next. The panel will then discuss some useful tips on how to manage international risks in this rapidly changing environment.

On 30 June, the European Commission published its longmuch-awaited proposal for a General Product Safety Regulation. Once adopted by the European Parliament and Council, the new rules will strengthen consumer product safety. This keynote presentation will outline the key features of this important new proposal, including how it addresses the challenges posed by new technologies and e-commerce, how it enhances market surveillance of unsafe products, and how it improves the way product recalls are communicated and organised for consumers.

An increasing number of "smart" consumer products are able to be tracked after purchase, because their use relies on connecting to a company's app or website, and may also require a paid subscription. With an increasing number of companies able to track their products, and the increased ability to reach out directly to consumers regarding specific consumer products they own, how does that change the approach to recalling products, and recall effectiveness? Do companies that have a paid subscription model or app for their products have a different responsibility for recall effectiveness than companies that cannot track their "not smart" products after sale? How will society's expectations of recall effectiveness change? This engaging panel will address how this growing knowledge gap in consumer product tracking is impacting recalls and recall effectiveness.

As well as transforming the very nature of a wide array of products that form a part of consumers’ everyday lives, technology is also significantly changing the way that consumers buy and take delivery of products. As a result, a host of new pieces of EU legislation are beginning to provide for a product safety regime that takes full account of the increasing digitization and globalization of consumer behavior. This session will provide a closer look at some of the key pieces of legislation being implemented at EU level over the course of the next 3 years to account for these changes. These include the following: the proposed General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR); the Market Surveillance Regulation (MSR); and the proposed AI Regulation.

This session will present different strategies and opportunities for approaching product compliance and safety at scale. All actors in the value chain can play a role to enable product safety, from manufacturers, retailers, market surveillance, and other stakeholders. We aim to explore how different product safety initiatives can have the greatest reach and impact, in particular considering new product innovations, different ways consumer’s access and interact with products, and how products can be available to consumers in multiple jurisdictions.

The international product safety landscape is rapidly shifting. This fast moving landscape poses challenges for product manufacturers in an increasingly global marketplace. This session will look at the global trends in product safety focussing on developments in the EU, UK and US, and international policy that shapes this landscape to help manufacturers anticipate and plan for what comes next. The panel will then discuss some useful tips on how to manage international risks in this rapidly changing environment.

Update from ICPHSO's President and Planning Chair.

The concept of product repairability is becoming prominent as the circular economy emerges as a forward-looking and efficient strategy to help regulate the functioning of our ecosystems. In this session, policymakers and practitioners in key markets will discuss how to privilege repair instead of replacing a product that presents any vulnerabilities or does not function properly anymore. This will be discussed in the context of ensuring consumer safety together with the increasing demand for repair or repurposed products and how efforts at sustainability of more durable products affect the decision to repair or repurpose products.

This session will look at the future of providing product information to an ever increasing connected and international consumer base. The session will look at the regulatory landscape for using digital means such as Quick Response (QR) codes to convey product labeling information to consumers and present ideas for leveraging technology in order to provide more effective communications to consumers and increase the effectiveness of instructions and warnings.

Compliance with safety standards and regulations serves as the backbone of designing a safe product. How standards are created and when they can be relied on to ensure that your product is safe enough is an important question. This panel will discuss the standards development process and the competing interests and pressure that are imposed on the committee. In addition, there will be a discussion of the legal ramifications of compliance with standards and how it can help in the future to defend the adequacy of the product to the government, to consumers, and to a court. There will also be a discussion of the problems created by the development of different standards in the U.S. and the EU and elsewhere and what the manufacturer should do to minimize the risks.

Connected and smart devices – every day devices fitted with microchips, sensors and wireless communication capabilities – are increasingly connecting people and objects to one another in ever-increasing ways. With the addition of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), products we use on a daily basis have the ability to make decisions on their own in increasingly complex situations. This, of course, is the benefit of AI. With increasing use, however, come questions about how we analyze and assign legal liability when things go wrong. The session will discuss how the world leaders in AI (China, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, France, and Japan) are currently navigating existing product liability laws and what designers, manufacturers and retailers of AI-driven products should keep in mind as legislation and other regulatory actions are being considered.

The LEGO Group is aiming to use sustainable materials in its packaging and products by 2030 and has been on this journey since 2015. The biggest challenge of our sustainability journey is to rethink and develop new and more sustainable materials that are as durable, strong, safe and of the same high quality as our existing bricks – and that fit with LEGO elements made over the last 60 years. This presentation will highlight the criteria for sustainable materials, and how materials are developed for the LEGO bricks from a supply chain as well as a technical point of view, as exemplified by the recently announced prototype bricks in recycled PET.

Regulators from Turkey and Saudi Arabia discuss product safety initiatives in their jurisdictions, including a highly integrated multi-role product safety management system, regulatory approaches to ensuring safety in ecommerce, and other topics relevant within their national product safety frameworks.

The EU’s second Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) was published in March 2020 as part of the European Green Deal. It aims to reduce the environmental damage caused by the ‘consume-and-discard’ product model and to establish a climate-neutral, resource-efficient economy by 2050. In order to do so, the EU must progress towards a sustainable economic system. The EU believes that the next step in achieving this ideal is through the reform of existing legislation and enacting major legislation in relation to the manufacture, consumption and disposal of products. This programme of legislative reform is due to be completed by the end of the current European Commission in 2024. This session will focus on providing practical insights into the forthcoming CEAP legislative and policy changes, both in terms of the expected new legal requirements that product manufacturers and other economic operators will need to meet, as well as the product design, functionality and market changes and challenges that these new requirements will create. Attendees will play a key role in the panel discussion, including participation in an interactive Q&A session to gain insights particular to their own perspective on and experience of the transition to the circular economy.

The concept of product repairability is becoming prominent as the circular economy emerges as a forward-looking and efficient strategy to help regulate the functioning of our ecosystems. In this session, policymakers and practitioners in key markets will discuss how to privilege repair instead of replacing a product that presents any vulnerabilities or does not function properly anymore. This will be discussed in the context of ensuring consumer safety together with the increasing demand for repair or repurposed products and how efforts at sustainability of more durable products affect the decision to repair or repurpose products.

This session will look at the future of providing product information to an ever increasing connected and international consumer base. The session will look at the regulatory landscape for using digital means such as Quick Response (QR) codes to convey product labeling information to consumers and present ideas for leveraging technology in order to provide more effective communications to consumers and increase the effectiveness of instructions and warnings.

Compliance with safety standards and regulations serves as the backbone of designing a safe product. How standards are created and when they can be relied on to ensure that your product is safe enough is an important question. This panel will discuss the standards development process and the competing interests and pressure that are imposed on the committee. In addition, there will be a discussion of the legal ramifications of compliance with standards and how it can help in the future to defend the adequacy of the product to the government, to consumers, and to a court. There will also be a discussion of the problems created by the development of different standards in the U.S. and the EU and elsewhere and what the manufacturer should do to minimize the risks.

Connected and smart devices – every day devices fitted with microchips, sensors and wireless communication capabilities – are increasingly connecting people and objects to one another in ever-increasing ways. With the addition of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), products we use on a daily basis have the ability to make decisions on their own in increasingly complex situations. This, of course, is the benefit of AI. With increasing use, however, come questions about how we analyze and assign legal liability when things go wrong. The session will discuss how the world leaders in AI (China, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, France, and Japan) are currently navigating existing product liability laws and what designers, manufacturers and retailers of AI-driven products should keep in mind as legislation and other regulatory actions are being considered.