The Right to Repair movement is generally associated with electronics, but its latest battle has been fought—and won—on an entirely different front: the ranches of America’s heartland. The issue at hand was a dispute between the Federal Trade Commission and tractor/farm equipment manufacturing company John Deere, and, specifically, a suit filed jointly by the FTC and five states against the company back in 2025. That suit was settled this week, and the settlement represents a resounding victory for the plaintiffs.
The FTC’s statement about the case accused the company of “illegally restrict[ing] the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combine [harvesters].” That statement was issued by then-FTC chair Lina Khan, who has since been removed from the position by the Trump administration and replaced by the more “deal-friendly,” in the words of the New York Times, Andrew Ferguson. (She has since served as part of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s transition team.)
The simple fact of the commission’s decision to take up the fight against John Deere represented some measure of vindication for farmers who’ve spent a decade battling for the right to repair their own vehicles. And as per a 2015 piece for WIRED by right-to-repair activist and iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, the question of technology isn’t as far from this dispute as one might think. Quoting a copyright exemption filed by the company, Wiens wrote that “because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, [the company argued] farmers receive ‘an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.’”
The idea that consumers don’t own the software they purchase, but rather a license to operate that software, is unpopular enough in the world of computing. Understandably, the attempt to extend the concept to tractors went down like the proverbial sack of shit with farmers, who’ve spent the millennia since the advent of agriculture being pretty satisfied with the idea that they own the mule they bought from the guy down the road, rather than a license to operate said mule.
Nevertheless, John Deere’s eagerness to reap the amber waves of gain that could be had by redefining the concept of ownership has meant that they’ve spent the last decade doing their very best to make it difficult for anyone but authorized dealers to repair their machinery. In particular, as per the FTC’s statement on this week’s settlement, the company “makes the only software repair tools capable of performing all electronic repairs on Deere equipment…[but] has previously made such tools available only to its authorized dealers, forcing farmers to rely on authorized dealers for many necessary repairs.” And as Wien explained in 2025, those software tools are copyrighted, so “not only [were] [John Deere] being anti-competitive, it [was] literally illegal to compete with them.”
That’s all set to change with the settlement reached between the company and the FTC this week. The FTC’s 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 applicable 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 plaintiff states.”
This is a pretty comprehensive smackdown, and it’s of course no accident that the case was brought by a Biden-era FTC chair. That hasn’t stopped Ferguson’s Bureau of Competition Director, Daniel Guarnera—you can read all about him on the Federalist Society website!—from crowing that “the FTC will continue fighting against anticompetitive restrictions on American consumers’ right to repair.” Now that the World Cup is over because America lost, Trump himself has been amusing himself positioning himself as a right-to-repair champion, although as ever, there’s precisely no indication that he a) understands what he is talking about or b) is portraying it accurately anyway.
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