“The agreement with Deere & Co. shows that repair access and IP protection can be defined narrowly enough to coexist without one side simply gaining the upper hand over the other.”
If a farmer buys a tractor that costs a small fortune, who owns it?
The instinctive answer is the farmer. And if he owns the tractor, he surely has the right to repair it, right?
Like most things in life, it’s not that simple. Modern devices are based on software and other technologies that still legally belong to the company that built the machine. The manufacturer retains the intellectual property rights to the equipment even after sale, and these rights may prevent the farmer from repairing his own machine. Both sides own something. Neither of them owns everything.
In the debate over the right to repair, this dispute tends to be treated as a zero-sum dispute. Consumer advocates have argued that “intellectual property rights” is just the label manufacturers use to refuse to let someone else touch a machine. Manufacturers, for their part, have warned that opening up repair tools paves the way for competitors to abuse their innovations — not to mention potential safety problems for users. Both concerns are valid, and neither fully answers the other.
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent settlement with Deere & Company is worth examining because it suggests the dispute may be less zero-sum than the rhetoric on both sides suggests. The settlement can also serve as a model for future similar disputes.
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Property has two sides
A modern combine harvester has electronic control units, embedded software, emissions sensors and diagnostic tools that make it more productive and at the same time more difficult to repair without requiring the manufacturer’s help. A farmer may retain ownership of their tractor and still need to call a dealer to clear a trouble code, pair a replacement sensor, or restart the machine after an emissions-related shutdown. If this call comes during planting or harvesting, the delay has real economic consequences.
The FTC and five states sued Deere on January 15, 2025, alleging that the company restricted access to repairs and pushed farmers only to authorized dealers. Deere denied wrongdoing. Andrew Ferguson, then FTC commissioner and current chairman, voted against filing the lawsuit. Under his chairmanship, both sides recently agreed on a proposed agreement.
Over the next decade, Deere must provide farmers and independent repairers access to the same repair resources available to authorized dealers on fair and reasonable terms, including reading and clearing trouble codes, reprogramming components, pairing replacement parts, and restarting equipment after certain emissions shutdowns.
Access without appropriation
One of the most important clauses of the settlement may be the one that limits the scope of the settlement. The order specifically states that licensing, subscribing or purchasing Deere’s repair resources does not transfer ownership of Deere’s intellectual property rights. The farmer owns the tractor. Deere retains rights to the Code.
This distinction is important. The settlement gives farmers the opportunity to diagnose and repair their own equipment. It does not grant you a copy of Deere’s source code, the right to redistribute the software, or any other claim to the underlying innovations. Access granted and intellectual property rights retained are kept analytically separate, which is not always the case with right-to-repair proposals more broadly.
The basic idea for this separation is known from intellectual property law: patents and copyrights are intended to create incentives for companies to develop new technologies. If manufacturers had to give up their rights to proprietary technologies whenever a repair was needed, the incentive to invest in these technologies could be correspondingly weakened. Of course, there are ongoing debates about how much incentive is actually needed in a given context. But our patent and copyright systems are based on incentive theory. And in most cases, the system has served innovative ecosystems reasonably well, despite its weaknesses.
At the same time, intellectual property rights in an embedded component do not justify unlimited control over every repair the machine will ever require. A settlement that ignores this risk would make “ownership” of a $500,000 combine look more like a long-term lease from the manufacturer than ownership in the true sense.
The terms and conditions of the settlement follow the same logic: Deere can charge for its repair resources through licenses, subscriptions or direct sales, but the price must be fair and reasonable and not simply what the market will bear.
A model with limits
Deere had already begun moving in this direction before the agreement. In 2025, the Operations Center PRO service was introduced, providing device owners with expanded diagnostics and repair options. The settlement converts this voluntary offer into an enforceable, decades-long commitment.
Whether this template will hold up elsewhere is another question. Agricultural machinery has features that make it easier to make compromises than might be the case in other industries: the repair functions involved are relatively well-defined, and the safety risks with a broken combine harvester are lower than with, for example, a medical device. But software is already included in almost every other modern device or device, so the same fundamental tension between intellectual property and physical property will always arise. The trade-off achieved here may be a useful model for these other situations, even if it does not apply exactly to all situations.
What the agreement shows is that repair access and IP protection can be defined narrowly enough to coexist without one side simply gaining the upper hand over the other. The purchase of a product that contains intellectual property rights of another person does not entitle the buyer to use those rights at his own discretion. However, owning intellectual property rights embedded in a product does not entitle a company to permanently depend on it for normal maintenance. The Deere agreement does not completely resolve this dispute, but rather creates it – which may be the more realistic goal given such a persistent and pervasive tension.
But software is already included in almost every other modern device or device, so the same fundamental tension between intellectual property and physical property will always arise. Congress is considering a similar intervention for automobiles: The REPAIR Act (HR 1566), introduced in 2025 and still pending in committee, would ban automakers from withholding vehicle data and repair tools from independent repair shops, similar to what the Deere settlement does for farm equipment. A negotiated solution can take effect immediately and adapt to technological changes; If a law is passed at all, it first requires federal regulation. The Deere settlement can therefore be a useful model for other situations, even if it does not accurately represent all situations.
Image source: Deposit Photos
Image ID: 253938270
Author: BlueJay18
https://ipwatchdog.com/2026/07/23/software-keeps-eating-the-world-but-the-right-to-repair-doesnt-have-to-go-with-it/
