US President Biden is cracking down on tech companies that thwart third-party repairs

US President Joe Biden is instructing the FTC to issue new rules to address repair restrictions that tech companies impose on third parties. He believes that consumers should be able to decide for themselves who repairs their devices.

The assignment to the Federal Trade Commission is part of a broader executive order in which the US president writes pro-competitive guidelines. Among other things, the FTC must draw up stricter rules for tech manufacturers and other companies that impose restrictions on independent repair shops and DIY repairers.

The executive order states that, among other things, smartphone makers “impose restrictions on doing it yourself or having it repaired by a third party [van apparaten]making repairs more expensive and time-consuming”. Among other things, restricting the distribution of new parts, diagnostic tools and tools would impede fair competition.

With his assignment, Biden underlines the importance of the right for consumers to make their own decisions about the repair of products. Incidentally, the FTC has been working on this for some time. In early May, the watchdog wrote another critical report for the US Congress. In it, the committee concludes that tech companies make it unnecessarily difficult for consumers to repair something themselves or not.

Recently, the conversation about the right to self-repair products has become very much alive among consumers and legislators, often fueled by the Right to Repair movement. For example, at the end of 2020, the European Parliament approved new rules regarding the reparability of products. The French government is one of the first countries in Europe since February of this year to require Apple, among others, to show the repairability in the form of a score on the site. It is not yet known when the upcoming FTC rules will be applied in practice.