The passport should follow the product to its second owner

The digital product passport (DPP) exists to support circularity. Its stated purpose includes making repair, refurbishment and recycling easier, and giving recyclers the information they need to recover materials.

There is a gap between that intention and most implementations, and it shows up at the moment a product changes hands.

What the regulation asks for, and what it leaves open

The regulation requires the passport to serve actors across the product's lifecycle, including repairers, refurbishers and recyclers, and to remain available for the product's life.

It does not require tracking who owns the item. That is left to the market, and for good reason: ownership is not a compliance fact.

But several things people want from a circular product depend on it.

Where ownership matters commercially

Resale. A second-hand buyer wants to know the item is genuine and to see its history. Without a record tied to the individual object, the passport tells them about the model, which is exactly the information a counterfeit also carries.

Warranty. A warranty that transfers with the product needs to know who currently holds it. Most companies handle this with receipts and a support process that breaks the moment the original buyer is out of the picture.

Service history. A repair record is only useful if it is bound to the object, not the model. This is what makes refurbishment economics work: a refurbisher paying for a used item wants to know what has been done to it.

Recall precision. Knowing which specific items are affected, and who holds them, is the difference between a targeted action and recalling a whole production run.

What a chain of custody actually is

A timestamped, immutable record of who held the item and when, queryable as a history rather than a current state.

Two properties matter. It has to be append-only, because a history that can be edited is not evidence. And it has to be bound to the individual object, which is only possible with per-item identity, as explained in the two pricing models.

That second point is the practical constraint most companies meet late: if the code identifies a product line rather than an object, no ownership feature is possible at any price.

The strategic argument

If resale, take-back or refurbishment appear anywhere in your strategy, the infrastructure those models need is the same infrastructure the passport needs: a persistent, verifiable record bound to a physical object.

Building the compliance version now and the circular version later means building it twice, and the second build has to reach products already in the field, which is the expensive kind of retrofit.

Junction tracks the chain of custody as an immutable, timestamped ledger, queryable as a history, for customers using per-item codes.

Sources

• European Commission, *Digital Product Passport: FAQ*, January 2026 update, questions 2 and 3 on
• the purpose of the passport and its use by repairers, refurbishers and recyclers.