John Deere agrees $99m right-to-repair settlement
10-year pledge opens diagnostic tools to farmers, dealer-locked software turns downtime into revenue
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John Deere will pay $99 million into a settlement fund for farmers who say the company steered them into costly dealer-only repairs, according to Reuters, while also committing to provide digital diagnostic and repair tools for large agricultural equipment for the next 10 years.
The deal covers eligible plaintiffs who paid authorized Deere dealers for repairs from January 2018 and still needs a judge’s approval in federal court in Chicago. It does not resolve the separate Federal Trade Commission case against Deere, which a judge allowed to proceed in 2025. In that lawsuit, the FTC alleges Deere blocked farmers from obtaining the tools and information needed to fix equipment “in a timely and cost-effective manner,” effectively forcing them into the company’s authorized network.
The settlement matters beyond one manufacturer because modern farm machinery is already a software business. Tractors and combines increasingly rely on proprietary firmware, encrypted diagnostics, and dealer-locked calibration routines; the hardware can be physically intact while the machine refuses to run until a software reset is performed. When the only party allowed to perform that reset is a franchised dealer, downtime becomes a revenue stream.
Deere’s 10-year commitment to make available “the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair” is a partial concession to the practical reality of farming: breakdowns are seasonal and time-sensitive, and the cost of waiting for a dealer can dwarf the cost of the part. The settlement also creates a cash pool that effectively refunds a slice of those dealer markups—without requiring Deere to admit wrongdoing.
The fight is also about who captures the after-market. Dealers earn from service hours, parts, and software access; independent mechanics and farmers themselves compete on time and local knowledge. As regulators and courts push right-to-repair, manufacturers face a choice between selling durable machines and selling a controlled ecosystem.
For now, Deere will write a check, open some software gates, and keep arguing the broader case in Washington.
The settlement fund is tied to repairs paid through Deere’s authorized dealers between 2018 and today, and the promised tool access runs for a decade.