In order to avoid a disproportionate burden and to limit the impact on their capacity to innovate, the Data Act lays down a number of specific rules, and even exemptions, for SMEs:
• The obligations provided in Chapter II (in particular the obligation to make the IoT data accessible to the user or a third party upon request of the user) are not applicable to data generated by the use of connected products manufactured or designed or related services provided:
o by a microenterprise or a small enterprise, provided that that enterprise does not have a partner enterprise or is not linked (within the meaning of Article 3 of the Annex to Recommendation 2003/361/EC) to a medium-sized or large enterprise, or is not subcontracted to manufacture or design these products or services;
o by an enterprise that has qualified as a medium-sized enterprise (under Article 2 of the Annex to Recommendation 2003/361/EC) for less than one year;
o for connected products for one year after the date on which they were placed on the market by a medium-sized enterprise.
• The reasonable compensation that may be requested by the data holder under Chapter III (data sharing between enterprises– B2B) is limited solely to the costs incurred in making the data available, where the recipient is an SME or a not-for-profit research organisation.
• Data can be made available free of charge to public sector bodies (B2G) in case of an emergency as provided for in Chapter V, except in cases where the data holder is a micro or small enterprise, which are entitled to fair compensation for making data available. Furthermore, the data sharing obligation to fulfil a public interest mission is not applicable to micro and small enterprises.