Industrial IoT is one of the primary sectors the Data Act was designed to address. Smart manufacturing equipment, industrial sensors, robotics, and connected industrial infrastructure generate enormous volumes of operational data — data that has historically been locked with equipment manufacturers, creating dependency and limiting the ability of industrial operators to use their own data effectively.
Why Industrial IoT Is a Core Target of the Data Act
The European Commission's impact assessment identified industrial IoT as a critical use case for the Data Act:
- Industrial operators (manufacturers, energy companies, logistics firms) frequently cannot access operational data from the equipment they own or operate
- Third-party maintenance providers cannot access diagnostics data, forcing dependence on OEM service contracts
- Industrial data cannot flow between equipment from different manufacturers, limiting interoperability
- Manufacturers hold accumulated operational data from many customers, creating significant information asymmetry
The Data Act's user data access rights and B2B data sharing provisions are direct responses to these conditions.
What Counts as Industrial IoT Under the Data Act
The Data Act's definition of "connected products" is broad and clearly covers:
- Manufacturing equipment with embedded sensors: CNC machines, industrial robots, automated assembly lines, quality control systems
- Energy systems: Industrial boilers, HVAC systems, generators, smart meters, renewable energy systems with monitoring
- Logistics and fleet: Telematics systems, warehouse automation, connected forklifts, conveyor systems
- Agricultural machinery: Precision agriculture systems, connected harvesters, irrigation sensors
- Construction equipment: Connected heavy machinery with operational monitoring
- Predictive maintenance systems: Any equipment with sensor arrays monitoring performance for maintenance triggering
Data Access Rights for Industrial Operators
If your business operates connected industrial equipment — whether owned outright, leased, or operated under a service contract — you have rights under the Data Act to access the operational data generated by your use of that equipment.
What data you can access:
- Performance and operational data (cycle times, output rates, energy consumption)
- Maintenance and diagnostic data (fault codes, wear indicators, predictive maintenance signals)
- Environmental sensor data (temperature, pressure, vibration readings)
- Usage data (operating hours, mode selection, operator interactions)
How access must be provided:
- Through the equipment's interface or accompanying software platform
- In a commonly used, machine-readable format
- By default, without requiring a special request for each access event
What you can do with it:
- Use it in your own operational analytics
- Share it with your preferred maintenance provider or analytics service
- Use it to negotiate informed service contracts rather than accepting OEM-only maintenance
Third-Party Maintenance Providers
One of the most commercially significant implications of the Data Act for industrial sectors is the right to share diagnostic and maintenance data with independent maintenance service providers.
Under the current market structure, equipment manufacturers often deny third-party maintenance providers access to the diagnostic data they need to service equipment effectively — forcing customers to use expensive OEM service contracts. The Data Act changes this:
- An operator can instruct the equipment manufacturer to share maintenance data with the operator's chosen independent maintenance provider
- The manufacturer cannot prevent this or penalise the operator for doing so
- The independent provider must use the data only for the maintenance purpose — they cannot use it to develop a competing product
This is a direct disruption to OEM service contract market structures in industrial sectors.
B2B Data Sharing in Manufacturing Supply Chains
Industrial operators often sit in complex supply chains where data from one company's equipment is relevant to another company's operations. The Data Act's B2B data sharing provisions apply:
FRAND access terms: If an equipment manufacturer makes operational data available to third parties commercially (e.g., selling fleet performance analytics to fleet operators), the terms must be fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory.
No competing product restriction: A data recipient (e.g., an analytics firm processing a manufacturer's machine data) cannot use that data to develop a competing machine or competing analytics product.
Supply chain transparency use cases: Where a supply chain participant needs operational data from equipment further up or down the chain, the Data Act provides a framework — but it requires the user whose equipment generated the data to instruct the share, not a direct right of access between supply chain parties.
Trade Secrets in Industrial Data
Industrial IoT raises significant trade secret questions. Equipment manufacturers frequently argue that operational data contains proprietary information about their equipment's design, performance characteristics, or algorithms.
The Data Act explicitly addresses this:
- Trade secret protection is available but must be specific — blanket assertions that all machine data is trade secret are not valid
- The data holder must demonstrate that specific data elements constitute genuine trade secrets
- Where possible, the non-secret portions of data must be made accessible
- Disputes about trade secret assertions may be referred to competent authorities
In practice: manufacturers with legitimate IP concerns should work with legal counsel to identify precisely which data elements they can protect and build disclosure policies that give operators maximum access consistent with legitimate trade secret protection.
SME Exemption in Industrial Contexts
The SME exemption (fewer than 50 employees and under €10M annual turnover) exempts small manufacturers from the IoT data access obligations. Many industrial equipment manufacturers will be above these thresholds. But small component manufacturers or niche equipment makers may qualify.
Note: the exemption applies to data access obligations — not to cloud switching provisions. A small industrial software vendor that also provides cloud-hosted data services must comply with cloud switching requirements regardless of size.
Practical Steps for Industrial Operators
If you operate connected industrial equipment:
- Map your equipment inventory: which systems generate data? Who holds it?
- Identify your data access position: can you currently access the operational data from each system?
- Prepare to make formal data access requests to manufacturers from September 2025
- Identify third-party service providers you want to share maintenance data with
If you manufacture connected industrial equipment:
- Build data access interfaces for your equipment range before September 2025
- Review OEM service contract structures — restrictions that prevent operators from using third-party maintenance are affected by Data Act user rights
- Identify genuine trade secret positions and document them specifically
- Update standard customer contracts to remove void data restriction clauses