Ok, I took the some return policy too lightly.
The return process of durable/tangible media to a physical address is described in Article 17.
But you were mainly asking for reasons for the physical address.
Remember, I am not a lawyer, and I also hesitate to provide my address, plus unknowingly take on all trader obligations/liabilities that I never considered in a B2B business. I don’t yet even have a website required by Exchange, because I first want to get my terms etc. straight. Diligence.
Back to the question: DSA Article 30 Point 1. (a) says so, repeating UCPD Article 7 Point 4 (b) and even CRP Article 6 Point 1 (c). IMO the EU really means it.
To my understanding this is so that consumer and whatever authorities can send the trader kind “cease and desist” letters if your presence on the marketplace does not comply to some odd rule.
Look further down to DSA Article 31, if besides to a trader there is also an “economic operator” - what I understand as manufacturer/developer or importer/distributor, there should also be an address field for that. @Ingo For overseas manufacturers/developers nudged into a trader role, would the economic operator be Adobe? @agandhi do we have this separate record at all? E.g. if some distributor that makes the product available to the (EC) market, and the reseller-trader purchases from them, where can the trader place that info?
Interestingly the EU is vague on other aspects of contract law because that’s national law. But afaik the trader’s address also belongs onto the copy of the contract that is to be sent to the consumer before the download begins.
The same way as the the trader should receive details about the consumer in the technical notice about the individual contract, including plenty other parameters. That is, as soon the contract is concluded. Not two weeks later as anonymized aggregate. At least if the trader is the “final trader” - the primary contact for the consumer.
While we’re there, I also have a question. Given the role of “merchant of record” somewhere around here (unknown concept in EU regulation), which gets pretty close to “final trader”, shouldn’t their address be shown in the trader info, rather than ours? Just sayin’