REACH consortia model agreements and other forms of data sharing

The REACH Regulation requires data sharing amongst registrants of the same substance in order to avoid unnecessary testing – in particular animal testing – and to minimise costs for industry and authorities. Existing test data should be jointly used, new tests should be carried out only one time on behalf of all registrants. The legally required cooperation of competitors does not work without rules set out by contract. The authors had been mandated by the German chemical industry to develop in close cooperation with a project team made up of industry and association experts model agreements for consortia and other forms of cooperation amongst registrants. For manufacturers, importers and only representatives who often will have to register a large amount of substances it is important that recognized standard versions of such agreements are available. The reader will find a variety of such model agreements in this book. When using one of the model agreements adaptation to the particular circumstances of an individual case will be necessary.