FTC Sues John Deere With Remedial Action

Today, the US The Federal Trade Commission sued farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Company—maker of John Deere green tractors, harvesters, and mowers—citing its long-standing reluctance to prevent its customers from repairing their own machines.

“Farmers depend on their farm equipment to make a living and feed their families,” FTC chairwoman Lina Khan wrote in a words along with full complaint. “Unjustified renewal bans could mean farmers are delayed during busy harvest windows.”

The FTC’s main complaint here is related to the software problem. Deere location limitations on its work programs. Deere only licenses their keys to authorized dealers, meaning farmers often don’t have to take their tractors to a simple third-party mechanic or fix the problem themselves. The suit wants John Deere to end its practice of limiting what its customers can use and making them available to outside suppliers.

Kyle Wiens is the CEO of consumer advocacy iFixit and a WIRED contributor who first wrote about John Deere’s repair-methods of disturbance in 2015. In an interview today, he saw how frustrated farmers are when they want to fix what’s gone wrong, and just follow Deere’s plan.

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

Another problem is that US copyright protection prevents anyone but John Deere from developing software that violates the restrictions the company has placed on its platform. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it impossible for the public to legally challenge copyrighted technology. John Deere materials are subject to copyright law.

“Not only is it anti-competitive, it’s illegal to compete,” says Wiens.

Deere in Headlights

Wiens says that although there have been a ten about push back against John Deere from farmers and promoters to fixcustomers who use the company’s machines did not see much benefit in either case.

“Things didn’t go well for the farmers,” says Wiens. “Although there has been a lot of noise about the right to organize in the past years, nothing has changed for the farmers on the ground.”

This suit against Deere, he thinks will be different.

“This has to be what it does,” says Wiens. “The FTC will not settle until John Deere develops the program. This is a step in the right direction.”

Deere’s reluctance to make its products readily available has angered many of its customers, and is often bipartisan. congressional support for reparability in agricultural areas. The FTC says John Deere violated it again laws It was issued by the state of Colorado in 2023 that they want agricultural tools sold in the government to make the working software available to the users.