The FTC Suing John Deere is a tipping point for the right to repair

Today, the United States The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Company — makers of the iconic John Deere tractors, harvesters and mowers — citing its long-standing reluctance to prevent its customers from repair their machines.

“Farmers rely on their farm equipment to make a living and feed their families,” FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan wrote in a statement next to full complaint. “Unfair repair restrictions can mean farmers face unnecessary delays during tight planting and harvest windows.”

The FTC’s main complaint here centers around a software problem. Deere places limitations to its operating softwaremeaning certain features and calibrations on their tractors can only be unlocked by mechanics who have the right digital key. Deere only licenses these keys to its authorized dealers, which means that farmers often cannot take their tractors to more convenient third-party mechanics or solve a problem themselves. The suit will require John Deere to stop the practice of limiting the repair features that its customers can use and make them available to those outside of official dealers.

Kyle Wiens is the CEO of the defense repair retailer iFixit and an occasional WIRED contributor who has previously written about John Deere repair-averse tactics in 2015. In an interview today, he noted that frustrated farmers do when they try to fix something that went wrong, only to run into Deere’s policy.

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

The other difficulty is that US copyright protection prevents anyone but John Deere from making software that goes against the restrictions the company has placed on its platform. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it so that people cannot legally oppose technological measures that fall under its protections. John Deere equipment is covered by this copyright policy.

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

Deere in the Headlights

Wiens says that although there has been a decade of thrust against John Deere by farmers and the advocates of reparationcustomers using the company’s machines didn’t see much benefit from all that talk.

“Things aren’t really getting any better for farmers,” says Wiens. “Even with all the noise around a right to repair over the years, nothing has materially changed for farmers on the ground.”

This trial against Deere, he thinks, will be different.

“That must be what he does,” says Wiens. “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 affordable has angered many of its customers, and even won over bipartisan support. support to Congress for repairability in the agricultural area. The FTC says John Deere also infringed legislation passed by the Colorado state government in 2023 that requires farm equipment sold in the state to make operating software accessible to users.