FTC Suing John Deere Is a Tipping Point for Right-to-Repair

Today, the US The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against farm equipment maker Deere & Co. — makers of the iconic green John Deere tractors, harvesters and sweepers — citing its longtime reluctance to prevent its customers from fixing their own machines.

“Farmers depend on their farm equipment to make a living and feed their families,” wrote FTC Chair Leena Khan. statement as well as Full complaint. “Unfair repair restrictions could mean farmers face unnecessary delays in tight planting and harvesting.”

The FTC’s main complaint here centers around a software problem. Deer Place Limitations of its operational softwareThat means certain features and calibrations on its tractors can only be unlocked by mechanics with the correct digital key. Deere only licenses those keys to its authorized dealers, meaning farmers often can’t take their tractors to more convenient third-party mechanics or fix a problem themselves. The lawsuit requires John Deere to stop its practice of limiting which repair features customers can use and make them available to outside authorized dealerships.

Kyle Wiens is the CEO of Repair Advocacy Retailer iFixit and occasional Wired contributor who first wrote about John Deere Anti-repair strategy In 2015. In an interview today, he mentioned how frustrated farmers are when they try to fix something that’s gone wrong, only to have Deere’s policies go awry.

“When you have one thing that doesn’t work, it’s not a big deal if you’re 10 minutes from the store,” Wiens says. “If the store is three hours away, which it is for most farmers in the country, that’s a huge problem.”

Another disadvantage is that US copyright protection prevents anyone other than John Deere from creating software that circumvents the restrictions the company has imposed on its platform. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it so that people cannot legally challenge the technological measures under its protection. John Deere equipment is subject to that copyright policy.

“Not only are they anti-competitive, it’s literally illegal to compete with them,” Wiens said.

Deer in headlights

Wiens says that there has been one though decade of pushback From against John Deere farmer And Advocate for repairabilityCustomers using the company’s machines did not see much benefit from all this talk.

“Things haven’t really gotten better for farmers,” Wiens said. “Even after all the fuss around right to repair over the years, nothing materially has changed for farmers on the ground yet.”

He thinks this case against Deere will be different.

“It has to be the thing that does it,” Wiens said. “The FTC will not settle until John Deere makes the software available. This is a step in the right direction.”

Deere’s reluctance to make its products more accessible has angered many of its customers, even becoming bipartisan in general. Congress support For restoration of agricultural land. The FTC alleges John Deere also violated the law It was passed by the Colorado state government in 2023 Farm equipment needed It is sold in the state to make functional software accessible to users.