John Deere is not going to settle: Farmers should not give up on the FTC, but they should do so in a timely way

Deere & Company representatives did not answer their questions on Wednesday. The company said this week that it was expanding options for farmers to repair equipment themselves in a pilot program.

They also wrote the FTC did not gather enough evidence to have “any real confidence of our ultimate chance of success” in litigation — and said the agency was also in ongoing active negotiations for a settlement with Deere.

Ferguson and Holy Oaks wrote that they welcomed the FTC taking up the cause of the farmer, but made procedural arguments against the lawsuit. They said the timing, right before Trump’s inauguration, lends the case “the stench of partisan motivation.”

John Deere is facing a federal lawsuit that accuses the company of illegally forcing farmers to use only authorized dealers in order to boost profits.

The chair of the FTC said that farmers rely on their agricultural equipment to earn a living and feed their families. Farmers have to face unnecessary delays during planting and harvest due to unfair repair restrictions.

The fight over farmers’ rights to repair their own agricultural equipment and parts is set to get even more intense following the filing of a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission.

The other difficulty is that US copyright protections prevent anyone but John Deere from making software that counteracts the restrictions the company has put on its platform. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes it so people can’t legally counteract technological measures that fall under its protections. John Deere’s equipment falls under that copyright policy.

“This has to be the thing that does it,” Wiens says. “The FTC is not going to settle until John Deere makes the software available. This is a step in the right direction.”

Kyle Wiens is the CEO of the repair advocacy retailer iFixit, and an occasional WIRED contributor, who wrote about John Deere’s repairaverse tactics in 2015. When a farmer attempts to fix something that goes wrong they run into Deere’s policy and become frustrated, he noted in an interview today.