The FTC’s lawsuit against John Deere is a potential game changer for more repairable hardware

Today the USA The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against agricultural equipment maker Deere & Company – maker of the iconic green John Deere tractors, harvesters and mowers – citing the company’s longstanding reluctance to prevent its customers from repairing their machines themselves .

“Farmers rely on their farm equipment to earn a living and support their families,” FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan wrote in one opinion next to the full complaint. “Unfair repair restrictions can cause farmers to suffer unnecessary delays during tight planting and harvesting windows.”

The FTC’s main complaint here revolves around a software problem. Deere Places Limitations of its operating softwareThis means that certain features and calibrations of its tractors can only be unlocked by mechanics who have the correct digital key. Deere only licenses these keys to its authorized dealers, meaning farmers often can’t take their tractors to cheaper third-party mechanics or simply fix a problem themselves. The lawsuit would require John Deere to stop the practice of restricting the repair features its customers can use and make them available to those who are not affiliated with official dealers.

Kyle Wiens is the CEO of the repair advocacy retailer iFixit and an occasional WIRED contributor who first wrote about John Deere repair-shy tactics in 2015. In an interview today, he noted how frustrated farmers get when they try to fix something that’s gone wrong and then run into Deere’s policies.

“If you have something that doesn’t work and you’re only 10 minutes from the store, it’s no big deal,” Wiens says. “If the store is three hours away, which is the case for farmers in most parts of the country, that’s a huge problem.”

The other difficulty is that copyright protection in the United States prevents anyone but John Deere from developing software that counteracts the restrictions the company has placed on its platform. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 provides that people cannot legally oppose technological measures covered by its protection. John Deere equipment is subject to this Copyright Policy.

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

Deere in the headlights

Wiens says that there was one decade from recoil against John Deere farmers And Proponent of repairabilitythe customers who use the company’s machines have not seen much benefit from all this discourse.

“Things really haven’t gotten any better for farmers,” says Wiens. “Despite all the excitement over a right to repair over the years, nothing significant has changed for local farmers.”

This lawsuit against Deere, he believes, will be different.

“That has to be the thing that does it,” Wiens says. “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 and even sparked general bipartisan outrage Congressional support for repairability in the agricultural sector. The FTC accuses John Deere of also violating the regulations legislation This was passed by the Colorado government in 2023 requires agricultural equipment sold in the state to make operational software available to users.

“Deere’s unlawful business practices increased farmers’ repair costs and impaired farmers’ ability to obtain timely repairs,” the lawsuit says.

Deere & Company did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Nathan Proctor, senior director of the Right to Repair Campaign at the advocacy group US PIRG, wrote a statement praised the FTC’s decision. He believes that no matter the outcome, this case will be a positive step for the right to repair more broadly.

“I think this discovery process will paint a picture that will make it very clear that their equipment is programmed to monopolize certain repair functions,” Proctor tells WIRED. “And I expect Deere to either fix the problem or pay the price. I don’t know how long this will take. But this is such an important milestone because once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s no turning back.”