The right-to-repair movement is commonly associated with electronics, but its latest battle was fought and won on an entirely different front: on the farms of America’s heartland. At issue was the dispute between the Federal Trade Commission and tractor/farm equipment manufacturer John Deere, and specifically the 2025 lawsuit filed jointly by the FTC and five states against the company. That lawsuit was settled this week and settlement means a brilliant victory for the plaintiffs.
In a statement on the case, the FTC accused the company of “unlawfully restricting the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combine harvesters.” This statement was made by Lina Khan, then FTC Chair was removed from his position Replaced by the Trump administration, and in its words, more “deal-friendly.” New York TimesAndrew Ferguson. (Since then served As part of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team.)
The simple fact of the Commission’s decision to start a fight against John Deere was a measure of vindication for farmers who had fought for ten years for the right to repair their vehicles. And as of 2015 cloth Technology isn’t as far removed from this debate as you might think, according to rights-to-repair activist and iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens for WIRED. Quote a copyright exception presented by the company, Wiens wrote that “computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors (the company claimed) to give farmers a ‘license to drive the vehicle for the life of the vehicle.'”
The idea that consumers buy a license to run that software, rather than the software itself, is unpopular in the computing world. Obviously, the attempt to extend the concept to tractors has gone down as the proverbial saying of farmers since the dawn of agriculture, who for millennia have been quite content with the idea that they own a mule they bought from the guy down the road rather than a license to drive said mule.
Despite this, John Deere’s enthusiasm for mowing amber gain waves By redefining ownership, they’ve spent the last decade doing everything they can to make it difficult for anyone but authorized dealers to repair their cars. Specifically, according to the FTC’s statement on this week’s settlement, the company “makes the only software repair tools that can perform all electronic repairs on Deere equipment…(but) previously provided such tools only to its authorized dealers, forcing farmers to rely on authorized dealers for many necessary repairs.” As Wien explained in 2025, these software tools were copyrighted, so “not only was it anti-competitive with (Con Deere), it was (literally) illegal to compete with them.”
That’s all set to change with a settlement reached this week between the company and the FTC. FTCs statement on the matter explains that the terms of the settlement require John Deere to “provide farmers and independent repair providers with the same equipment repair resources, including related software capabilities, that it currently provides to authorized Deere dealers” and to do so “for the next 10 years and under the supervision of the FTC and the plaintiff states.”
It’s a pretty comprehensive diversion, and it’s certainly no coincidence that the case was brought up by a Biden-era FTC chairman. That didn’t stop Ferguson’s Competition Bureau Director Daniel Guarnera – you can read all about him here. Federalist Society website!— exclaimed that the “FTC will continue to fight anticompetitive restrictions on American consumers’ right to repair.” Now that the World Cup has ended because America lost, Trump is amused by pretending to be a champion with a right to repair, even though, as always, his a) he understands what he is talking about or b) becomes describes him accurately anyway.
