MOLINE, Ill. – A proposed settlement of a right-to-repair lawsuit against Deere & Company has been met with skepticism by the executive director of The Repair Association.

The class action lawsuit was filed Jan. 12, 2022, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division. The proposed settlement, announced April 6, must be approved by a judge.

The proposed settlement calls for Moline-based Deere to pay $99 million into a fund for settlement class members who paid Deere’s authorized dealers for repairs to their large farm equipment from Jan. 10, 2018, until the date of preliminary approval. Under the agreement, Deere will make available, for 10 years, “the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis and repair of such equipment without the need to use an authorized dealer.”

In the lawsuit, Deere was accused of deliberately monopolizing the market for repair and maintenance services of its agricultural equipment. By using onboard central computers known as engine control units (ECUs), the lawsuit said Deere made “crucial software and repair tools inaccessible to farmers and independent repair shops.”

The lawsuit also said Deere’s network of independent dealerships was not permitted through their agreements with the company to provide farmers or repair shops with access to the same software and repair tools the dealerships have.

“As a result of shutting out farmers and independent repair shops from accessing the necessary resources for repairs, Deere and the dealerships have cornered the Deere Repair Services Market in the United States for Deere-branded agricultural equipment controlled by ECUs and have derived supracompetitive profits from the sale of repair and maintenance services,” the lawsuit reads.

Deere said in a statement the settlement addresses the issues raised in the complaint and brings the case to an end with no finding of wrongdoing.

“As we continue to innovate industry leading equipment and technology solutions supported by our world-class dealer network, we are equally committed to providing customers and other service providers with access to repair resources,” Denver Caldwell, Deere vice president of aftermarket & customer support, said in the statement. “We’re pleased that this resolution allows us to move forward and remain focused on what matters most – serving our customers.”

Gay Gordon-Byrne, of The Repair Association, told Farm World the settlement is far too little considering the duration and scale of the abuse.

“Deere has been blocking repair access since at least 2015 when they told us that ‘farmers don’t really own their equipment – they just have a license to use it,’” she said. “Twenty years later, nothing has changed. If Deere plays nice for 10 years, it still won’t justify being stuck with John Deere repair for another 10 years.”

Deere made the claim that farmers don’t own their equipment (but rather receive an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate it) to the U.S. Copyright Office in April 2015. Later that year, Gordon-Byrne said the office clarified that farmers could fix their equipment without violating copyright law.

After the clarification from the Copyright Office, Deere rewrote its entire end user licensing agreement to block repair of their product line, she said. “A decade of deception does not lead me to trust anything they say,” Gordon-Byrne noted. “So there is a basic problem of trust.

“Then there is money. Big tractors can run more than $1million each. (The) $99 million doesn’t begin to defray the excess repair costs being paid by 200,000 customers that already forked over $2 billion for the initial purchases. Please correct my math, but I think a roll of stamps has more value.”

Buyers shouldn’t have to beg for permission to use their property any way they see fit, she said. The vendor (and former owner) gave up their control as a part of the purchase, Gordon-Byrne said.

“We are using the brand name Deere, but we mean all ag original equipment manufacturers (OEMs),” she pointed out. “Some have better policies than others. We want the standard to be, ‘you bought it – you own it. It’s yours to use, repair, customize or resell as you see fit.’”

Anything that restricts these basics harms the basic concepts of ownership, liability, accounting, taxation, investment and more, Gordon-Byrne said.

A separate lawsuit, filed in 2025 by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in Illinois and Minnesota, accused Deere of unfair practices that have driven up equipment repair costs for farmers while also depriving farmers of the ability to make timely repairs on critical farming equipment, including tractors. The FTC suit is still ongoing.

Gordon-Byrne said federal right-to-repair legislation seems inevitable after a few states have set their own rules. She said The Repair Association has worked on 16 bills so far in 2026, “so we know there is demand for right to repair. The challenge isn’t how bills are written – it’s how much pressure the OEMs can put on legislators to kill bills. It will only take a handful of laws to break the stranglehold of dealership repair.”

She urged farmers to contact their state representatives and senators asking for their help in passing agriculture-related right-to-repair legislation.