Agricultural Right to Repair Act

The Agricultural Right to Repair Act requires farm equipment manufacturers to provide owners and independent repair shops with the documentation, parts, software, and tools needed to diagnose, maintain, and repair their equipment, on fair and reasonable terms.

Sec. 2, Definitions: Defines key terms including 'farm equipment' (tractors, combines, sprayers, etc., excluding highway vehicles), 'owner', 'independent repair provider', 'authorized repair provider', 'original equipment manufacturer (OEM)', 'documentation', 'part', 'tool', 'embedded software', 'firmware', 'farm equipment data', 'software bill of material', 'commonly available', 'trade secret', and 'fair and reasonable terms' (which sets specific cost and term rules for parts, tools, and documentation).

Sec. 3, Requirements for OEMs: Requires OEMs to make available on fair and reasonable terms all documentation, parts, software, firmware, and tools for diagnosis, maintenance, or repair to any owner or independent repair provider, and to provide farm equipment data to the owner or with the owner's authorization to an independent repair provider. OEMs must also provide the means to disable or enable security locks. It allows circumvention of copyright technological protection measures for diagnosis, maintenance, repair, interoperability, security research, or non-infringing modification. If an OEM stops offering a part, documentation, software, or tool to authorized repair providers, any related copyright or patent goes into the public domain. OEMs must ensure parts can be replaced with commonly available tools or with tools provided on fair and reasonable terms.

Sec. 4, Enforcement: Treats a violation of the Act as an unfair or deceptive act or practice under the Federal Trade Commission Act, and gives the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement powers, penalties, and privileges.

Sec. 5, Rulemaking: Directs the FTC to issue rules to carry out the Act, and requires those rules to be consistent with the Clean Air Act and related emissions regulations.

Sec. 6, Limitations: The Act does not require OEMs to divulge trade secrets except as necessary, does not alter agreements with authorized repair providers except to limit OEM obligations, does not require an authorized repair provider to share another OEM's materials, does not require OEMs to provide parts or equipment used only in product development, and does not allow modifications that permanently disable safety notifications, change settings to permanently violate safety or emissions laws, evade emissions or copyright laws, or allow other illegal modifications.