Podcast: The Briefing from the IP Law Blog - The Right to Repair and More New Exemptions
The Briefing from the IP Law Blog – DMCA: The Right to Repair and More new Exemptions
Le 22 janvier 2025, le gouvernement du Québec a publié un projet de règlement visant à modifier le Règlement d’application de la Loi sur la protection du consommateur existant. Selon les commentaires du gouvernement du Québec...more
On January 22, 2025, the Government of Quebec published a draft Regulation to amend Quebec’s existing Regulation respecting the application of the Consumer Protection Act. According to comments from the Government of Quebec...more
On Friday, January 31, 2025, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (“Auto Innovators”), a trade association representing manufacturers in the auto industry, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Maine seeking to enjoin...more
In the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, the Biden FTC rushed to initiate major lawsuits and to tie a bow on various antitrust policy efforts. In a series of dissenting statements, the minority Republican...more
Last week, the FTC and the Illinois and Minnesota Attorneys General brought suit against Deere & Company (Deere) challenging allegedly unfair equipment repair restrictions, which they claim resulted in higher equipment repair...more
Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a 65-page report detailing what it views as its accomplishments over the last four years. In a press release summarizing the report, the FTC touts the following...more
OEMs may finally get some clarity in the next couple of months about their obligations under Massachusetts and Maine right to repair laws requiring them to provide owners and independent repair facilities access to mechanical...more
In many cases, the answer is yes, but following a recently-adopted exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), owners of certain retail-level machines are no longer forced to hire OEM-certified technicians to...more
A new exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows McDonald’s employees, franchise owners, and others to fix McDonald’s often out-of-order ice cream machines. Prior to this exemption, most McDonald’s ice...more
Interest in the “right-to-repair” movement continues to grow, as a number of states propose new legislation in this realm for consumer electronics, with five states successfully enacting such laws. But these laws are not...more
The Automotive Right to Repair Working Group convened by the Maine Attorney General will review proposed legislation that would substantially amend provisions of the Maine Right to Repair Law concerning access to mechanical...more
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2025 includes a mandate that contractors furnish information and documentation to enable the military to modify and repair equipment and systems. Not surprisingly, industry is...more
The US Copyright Office has granted a copyright exemption giving restaurants the right to repair broken equipment by bypassing locks intended to prevent anyone other than the manufacturer from repairing them. This...more
The Maine Attorney General’s Office recently announced that it has convened an 11-person working group of industry stakeholders to develop recommendations for legislation to establish an entity with rulemaking and enforcement...more
Now it’s in force: the EU Directive on a right to repair. It is now up to the Member States to transform the fully harmonized provisions into national law within 24 months. From 31 July 2026 at the latest, manufacturers and...more
The FTC’s Warning Letters - Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent eight companies warning letters regarding their warranty practices, alerting them that certain restrictive warranty language may violate...more
To help organizations stay on top of the main developments in European digital compliance, Morrison Foerster’s European Digital Regulatory Compliance team reports on some of the main topical digital regulatory and compliance...more
Welcome to Wiley’s update on recent developments and what’s next in consumer protection at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In this newsletter, we analyze recent regulatory...more
Protecting our planet by making products on the EU market more sustainable and circular: This is the main objective of the new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation ("ESPR"), which has come into force on 18 July 2024...more
The FTC has issued warning letters to eight companies, accusing them of possibly imposing restrictions on third-party servicing of products in violation of the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA). The MMWA is a federal...more
The FTC sent warning letters to eight companies informing them that their warranty practices may violate the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA) by allegedly restricting consumers’ ability to repair their products....more
Product lifecycle is the common thread in emerging Right to Repair and fashion waste legislation - Whether consumers are looking at coffeemakers, smartphones, jeans or shoes, many are rejecting planned obsolescence — the...more
On June 7, 2024, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance et al. v. Library of Congress et al., No. 23-5067 (D.C. Cir.), vacated an earlier district court decision and held that rules...more
Trade associations representing independent repair facilities have become strong advocates for expanding right to repair laws to increase member access to vehicle telematics data. These efforts have created uncertainty for...more
On May 28, 2024, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed into law the “Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment” bill (HB24-1121). The legislation expands the state’s 2023 right to repair law, which currently...more