Legal Aspects of Safety Designed Software Development, Especially under European Law

Meinhard Erben (1) , Wolf Günther , Tobias Sedlmeier , Dieter Lederer (2) , Klaus-Jürgen Amsler

1 Attorneys-at-Law
2 Vector Consulting GmbH

This lecture deals with the question what has to be done to prevent liability risks stated by European law. In particular, it deals with the question whether the compliance with state-of-the-art safety standards (such as IEC 61508) leads to an exemption from liability for producers and/or suppliers of software. After having defined the terms "product liability" and "producer's liability", we shall point out the legal measures which are necessary for the fulfilment of the manufacturer's organizational and due diligence obligations. Thereby, we shall come to the conclusion that the implementation and application of procedures described in applicable safety standards such as IEC 61508, EN etc. are only some of the minimum core conditions to prevent liability risks stated by European law in connection with defects of software caused by the software's design, development, production and/or distribution process.

Keywords: Software development; product liability; producer's liability; compliance with safety standards; IEC 61508

Domains: Computer Science [cs]; Embedded Systems

Meinhard Erben, Wolf Günther, Tobias Sedlmeier, Dieter Lederer, Klaus-Jürgen Amsler. Legal Aspects of Safety Designed Software Development, Especially under European Law. Conference ERTS'06, Jan 2006, Toulouse, France. ⟨hal-02270499⟩