Introduction: The DPP – An Obligation, an Implementation Trap
The European ESPR 2027 directive introduces the Digital Product Passport (DPP). It is a regulatory mandate for manufacturers, aimed at enhancing traceability and the Right to Repair.
The Commission has steered discussions toward adopting existing data vocabularies, primarily Schema.org.
At Verisav, as designers of a proposed open standard, VDOS, we assert that a raw adoption of Schema.org, without a layer of strict technical governance, will lead to costly interoperability chaos for the industry.
This paper explains why the lack of rigorous standardization creates inevitable technical debt.
- The Semantic Trap: Schema.org's Excessive Flexibility Schema.org is a toolbox for describing objects, not a compliance protocol. Its flexibility, ideal for SEO, becomes a critical problem in a regulatory context.
1.1. Modeling Ambiguity
The DPP requires precise information about the repairability of a part.
How can a manufacturer express this in JSON-LD (Schema.org)?
Option A: Product > partOf > Service
Option B: Product > usesPart > Product
Each option is technically valid. But if thousands of manufacturers choose different paths, third-party software (repair platforms) will have to code and maintain specific parsers for every variation. This is the opposite of interoperability.
1.2. The Regulatory Data Gap
The ESPR regulation requires specific fields (e.g., repairability index) to be present for the DPP to be compliant.
Schema.org has no native mechanism to designate a field as mandatory (required).
Consequence: A DPP that is technically valid according to Schema.org, but omits an ESPR-required field, is a non-compliant DPP. The manufacturer has no technical guarantee of legality.
- The Cost of Non-Standardization (The Technical Debt) For businesses, this fragmentation translates into massive R&D costs.
2.1. The Phenomenon of Constant Reverse Engineering
If you are a recycler consuming DPPs from thousands of brands:
Without a strict standard, you spend your time reverse-engineering the Schema.org implementation of every manufacturer.
Interoperability becomes a permanent operating cost. This is the technical debt transferred to the entire ecosystem.
2.2. The Cryptographic Agility Requirement (Quantum-Readiness)
The DPP must have guaranteed integrity for decades. Current digital signatures are vulnerable to future Quantum Computers (PQC).
A data standard not designed to be Cryptographically Agile will force manufacturers to rewrite their registry structures to integrate PQC.
The danger: A DPP created in 2027 could become unverifiable by 2040 without this agility.
- VDOS: The Methodology That Closes the Loop The Verisav DPP Open Standard (VDOS) methodology is a strict technical profiling approach that transforms Schema.org from a flexible language into a rigorous protocol. This methodology is demonstrated by our Public Authority Tool.
VDOS addresses this need through three pillars:
Technical Profiling (Shaping): We use validation constraint languages (like Shacl) to enforce a strict structure. If a DPP validates against the VDOS methodology, it is mechanically compliant with ESPR.
Automated Interoperability: Uniformity eliminates the cost of mapping. A single software implementation is enough to read all VDOS-compliant DPPs.
Crypto Agility (PQC): The VDOS methodology decouples the signing algorithm from the data structure, allowing cryptographic proofs to be updated to Post-Quantum standards without rewriting the core data standard.
Conclusion and Call to Action
The Digital Product Passport is too critical to be left to free semantic interpretation. Technical non-standardization today will result in massive costs for businesses tomorrow.
Our Verisav DPP Open Standard (VDOS) methodology is proven by our publicly available tool. We invite all developers, architects, and European working groups to:
Test and audit the VDOS methodology using our Public Authority Tool on https://tools.verisav.fr/tools.
Contribute to making this methodology the reference protocol to guarantee seamless DPP interoperability.
Join the conversation and standardize your compliance.
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