Deere & Company, the parent company of John Deere, Inc., reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission of four Midwest states and Arizona to settle an antitrust lawsuit against the farm equipment maker on July 8 that gives farm equipment customers the right to repair their own John Deere tractors and other farm equipment.
The FTC settlement, entered by both sides on July 8 in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, requires Deere provide farmers and independent repair providers with the same equipment repair resources, including applicable software capabilities for the next 10 years and under the supervision of the FTC and the five states. Currently, the company only provides these resources to authorized Deere dealers.
The settlement also mandates that Deere instruct its dealers not to discriminate against or retaliate against customers who repair their own equipment. Earlier this year, a prominent Chicago landscaping contractor filed a nearly identical lawsuit against the company and its construction and forestry division.
“Today’s settlement allows farmers to do what they have done for generations: fix their own tractors and other farm equipment, without having to pay an authorized John Deere dealer to do it for them,” said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera. “The deal with Deere will help lower costs for American farmers.”
Deere has been embroiled in the fight to provide codes, software updates and other information needed to repair its own machines with customers for the past decade with The Repair Association and other right-to-repair groups challenging the manufacturer’s legal language about what voids warranties, as well as the protection of error codes and software updates on increasingly technologically advanced machines.
“After years of fighting for the right to repair, this order gives farmers real hope. But promises on paper must become tools in the hands of farmers, and we will be watching implementation every step of the way,” said Willie Cade, farmer and founder of the Electronics Reuse Conference, a right-to-repair advocate. Cade’s grandfather, Theo Brown, was a famous John Deere engineer who pioneered and patented the first manure spreader in 1915.
John Deere did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the deal, but the final approval of the deal is generally seen as a positive for the parallel antitrust lawsuit over the company’s construction and forestry products.
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