Increasing use of Building Information Management (BIM) requires solutions for sharing Product Data (PD), generated and governed by manufacturers, across applications and actors of the architecture, engineering, construction and operation industry. The needed PD, generated and governed by manufacturers, must be available in a machine-interpretable way to facilitate digital processing. However, it is usually provided in proprietary data formats, such as software specific BIM objects accompanied by PDF documents. The aim of this study is to analyse the current approach to PD provision by the manufacturers to the construction industry and the role of BIM models in sharing the data. A scoping literature review was conducted, supported by a case study of a database providing BIM objects in the IFC file format for compound elements such as walls and floors. Furthermore, the possibility to represent compound elements and their incorporated products using Linked Data was investigated. Findings suggest that PD provision and exchange is limited for several reasons that can span from lack of expertise to data management issues. While the possibility to represent PD in IFC BIM objects as well as with Linked Data was concluded to be possible with currently available means, it has yet to be adopted by the industry. This hinders the efficient implementation of PD into building models. While both approaches can be refined, the entirety of PD transferred to one BIM model via BIM objects might not be needed for every use case in its life cycle. Therefore, the author argues linking the BIM model to PD in a database, rather than the implementation of all PD into BIM objects, facilitating access to the information required by the individual use case.