Tinkering with the Right to Repair

When a printer malfunctions beyond the scope of a quick fix, or a smartphone screen cracks beyond use, consumers often have few options. Many manufacturers restrict who may repair the products they make and market, authorizing only a select few technicians. Such restrictions may subject consumers to longer waits and higher prices for repairs.

The “right-to-repair” movement seeks to protect consumers by requiring manufacturers to permit third-party repairs and to make the tools, parts, and documentation necessary for repairs available to consumers and independent repair shops. Once a fringe advocacy cause, the right-to-repair movement has grown into a significant regulatory force, with seven U.S. states enacting right-to-repair laws since 2022 and an additional 33 states actively considering similar bills.

Debates over right-to-repair laws sit at the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property, environmental, and industrial policy, and engineering ethics. Manufacturers, many of whose market position relies on keeping proprietary technology out of competitors’ hands and maintaining a high-quality consumer experience, have long argued that proprietary repair restrictions are essential to protect software security and product quality. Right-to-repair proponents counter that repair restrictions amount to anti-competitive monopolization of repair markets, burdening low-income households and rural communities.

Scholars have also raised questions about unintended environmental consequences of right-to-repair laws. Some economic models suggest that, for certain kinds of cheaper-to-produce goods, easier repair access could paradoxically spur additional demand in currently underserved markets, driving global purchases and potentially accelerating the creation of additional e-waste.

State implementation of right-to-repair laws remains uneven. California’s sweeping Right to Repair Act, which took effect in July 2024, requires consumer electronics and appliance manufacturers to provide repair documentation, parts, and tools for three to seven years after a product’s manufacture date. Other state laws are narrower in scope. New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act does not allow independent repair providers to bypass software locks, and Minnesota’s right-to-repair law, once considered the broadest, excludes motor vehicles, medical devices, and farm machinery.

Federal regulators have also aligned themselves with the Right to Repair movement. In January 2025, the Federal Trade Commission, joined by several states’ attorneys general, filed a lawsuit against Deere & Company, alleging that the farm equipment manufacturer’s exclusive control over its Service ADVISOR diagnostic software created an unlawful repair monopoly in violation of federal and state antitrust laws.

Despite state and regulatory momentum, Congress has not yet passed right-to-repair legislation. The Fair Repair Act, introduced in both the 2020 and 2021 congressional sessions, failed to advance, and the 2022 Agricultural Right to Repair Act similarly died on the U.S. House floor.

In this week’s Saturday Seminar, scholars debate the social, economic, and environmental impacts of right-to-repair laws.

• In an IEEE article, Hampton University’s Landon Brooks and several coauthors examine the ethical implications of manufacturer-imposed repair restrictions. They argue that repair restrictions disproportionately burden low-income consumers by steering them to authorized service providers who, often, offer services at inflated prices. The Brooks team contends that broader consumer repair could reduce electronic waste, now the world’s fastest-growing waste stream. Because smartphone manufacturing accounts for 85 to 95 percent of a device’s lifetime greenhouse gas emissions, Brooks and his coauthors argue that extending devices’ service lives through affordable independent repair could meaningfully reduce emissions. They urge engineers to resist planned obsolescence, avoid artificial software locks, and design modular, repairable products.
• In a Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law article, practitioner Shaheer Hashmi argues that manufacturer-imposed restrictions on repairing medical devices inflate health care costs, deepen dependence on original equipment manufacturers, and leave critical equipment unavailable when hospitals need it most. Drawing on COVID-era shortages and breakdowns in donated-device markets, Hashmi contends that broader repair rights would improve patient access, reduce downtime, and strengthen emergency resilience. He further argues that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention rules and related intellectual property rules, which sit at the center of software-based repair restrictions, are overly restrictive. Hashmi urges a tailored framework that expands access while preserving safety, training, and oversight.
• In a recent Journal of Law, Market & Innovation article, Manon Vanderhaeghe of the Catholic University of Leuven argues that the European Union’s emerging right-to-repair framework remains constrained because it improves access to repair mainly through consumer, design, and data-governance measures rather than through broader intellectual-property reform. Although Vanderhaeghe identifies the EU’s new design-law repair clause as a meaningful step, she contends that its narrow scope leaves manufacturers able to use patents, copyrights, trademarks, and data-access rules to limit independent repairers’ access to spare parts, embedded software, repair information, and product-generated data. She concludes that without further rebalancing intellectual property against repair rights, the EU’s reforms will fall short of a genuinely competitive circular economy.
• In an article in the Journal of Regulatory Economics, Jeffrey Wagner and Michael Dortz of the Rochester Institute of Technology argue that right-to-repair laws can improve social welfare not only by increasing competition in repair markets, but also by inducing manufacturers to preempt regulation by sharing some repair information and parts on their own. Modeling original equipment manufacturers as dominant firms with strong first-mover informational advantages, Wagner and Dortz contend that even the credible threat of antitrust enforcement or repair legislation can lower repair prices, expand repair output, and reduce electronic waste. They caution, however, that the welfare-maximizing level of sharing may be partial rather than total, especially where manufacturers remain the most efficient repair providers.
• In an article published in Resources, Conservation & Recycling, the University of Santiago’s Francisco López-Bermúdez and Xavier Vence argue that the European Commission’s proposed directive on common repair rules adopts too narrow an approach to promoting independent repair. They contend that Europe’s proposal focuses too heavily on transparency tools—such as online platforms, standardized information forms, and voluntary quality standards—while failing to confront more fundamental barriers, including planned obsolescence, limited access to spare parts and repair information, and the unfavorable relative price of repair. López-Bermúdez and Vence further warn that the proposed directive’s closed model would channel repair through manufacturer-sanctioned networks, potentially burdening independent repairers and even limiting member states’ ability to adopt more ambitious national reforms.
• In a working paper, Ece Gülserliler of Tilburg University, and Atalay Atasu and Luk N. Van Wassenhove of INSEAD, argue that right-to-repair mandates can reshape firms’ business models by pushing producers to retain ownership through leasing or other non-ownership models to avoid intellectual property leakage and secondary-market competition. Gülserliler and her team contend that this strategic response can reduce repair and reuse volumes, raise prices, and sometimes leave both consumers and the environment worse off, especially for low-cost products. Although right-to-repair policies can benefit producers of high-cost products when infringement risk is limited, the Gülserliler team concludes that blanket mandates are misguided and that policymakers should tailor any new rules to account for product cost, life-cycle impacts, and existing reuse conditions.