Intellectual Property Law and the Right to Repair - By Leah Chan Grinvald & Ofer Tur-Sinai

Oct 23, 2026

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Intellectual Property Law and the Right to Repair argues that intellectual property doctrine should accommodate consumers’ ability to repair their products. The article reviews the momentum for state “right to repair” legislation and explains why enactment has stalled, including manufacturer lobbying grounded in concerns about intellectual property interests. It builds a theoretical framework reconciling repair access with IP protections, then analyzes related doctrines across patent, trade secret, and copyright contexts, identifying where IP can block full implementation and proposing reforms to enable workable repair rules.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages66

Reading Time2 h 46 min

AccessFree to download

INTRODUCTION

I. THE REPAIR SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND RIGHT TO REPAIR LEGISLATION

A. The Repair Social Movement

B. Why Now?

C. Legislation

II. NORMATIVE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR A RIGHT TO REPAIR

A. External Justifications

B. Internal Justifications

III. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RAMIFICATIONS FOR A RIGHT TO REPAIR

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW AND THE RIGHT TO REPAIR By Leah Chan Grinvald* & Ofer Tur-Sinai ** This Article posits that intellectual property law should accommodate consumers’ right to repair their products. In recent years, there has been a growing push towards state legislation that would provide consumers with a“right to repair” their products. Currently, twenty states have pending legislation that would require product manufacturers to make available replacement parts and repair manuals. Unfortunately, though, this legislation has stalled in many of the states. Manufacturers have been lobbying the legislatures to stop the enactment of these repair laws based on different concerns, including how these laws may impinge on their intellectual property rights. Indeed, a right to repair may not be easily reconcilable with the United States’far-reaching intellectual property rights regime. For example, requiring manufacturers to release repair manuals could implicate a whole host of intellectual property laws, including trade secrets. Similarly, employing measures that undercut a manufacturer’s control of the market for replacement parts might conflict with patent exclusivity. Nonetheless, this Article holds that intellectual property laws should not be used to prevent a right to repair from being fully implemented. In support of this claim, this Article develops a theoretical framework that justifies aright to repair in a manner that is consistent with intellectual property protection. Based on this theoretical foundation, this Article then explores, for the first time, the various intellectual property rules and doctrines that may be implicated in the context of the current repair movement. As part of this analysis, this Article identifies areas where intellectual property rights could prevent repair laws from being fully realized, even if some of the states * Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School. ** Associate Professor of Law, Ono Academic College (Israel) . LL.B., Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem; LL.M., Columbia University. For helpful comments, suggestions, and discussions, the authors are grateful to Katya Assaf, Sarah Burstein, Dylan Gilbert, Eric Goldman, Lital Helman, Cynthia Ho, Steven Jamar, Mark Lemley, Peter Menell, Lateef Mtima, Kali Murray, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Aaron Perzanowski, Michael Risch, Sharon Sandeen, Joshua Sarnoff, Jessica Silbey, Michal Shur-Ofry, Ryan Vacca, and Peter Yu, as well as the participants of the 2018 IP Mosaic Roundtable Conference (New Hampshire), the Works-in-Progress Intellectual Property Colloquium (WIPIP) (Houston, 2019), and the Sha’arei Mishpat Law College Faculty Seminar (Israel, 2019) . Finally, the authors thank the editors of the Fordham Law Review for their careful and thoughtful edits. 64 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 88 pass the legislation, and recommends certain reforms that are necessary to accommodate the need for a right to repair and enable it to take hold. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... 65 I. THE REPAIR SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND RIGHT TO REPAIR LEGISLATION............................................................................ 71 A. The Repair Social Movement .............................................. 71 B. Why Now? ........................................................................... 73 C. Legislation .......................................................................... 76 1. The Model Legislation ................................................. 77 a. Definitions and Scope ............................................ 77 b. Mandating Disclosure of Information.................... 78 c. Mandating the Availability of Parts and Tools to Facilitate Repairs ................................................. 78 d. Mandating Disclosure of Information to Allow Security Protections to Be Reset.....................

FAQs

What central position does the article take about intellectual property law and repair rights?

The article argues that intellectual property laws should not be used to prevent the right to repair from being fully implemented, and it develops a framework consistent with IP protection.

Why has right-to-repair legislation stalled in many states?

It explains that manufacturers have lobbied legislatures against repair laws, raising concerns that the laws could implicate their intellectual property rights, including trade secrets and patent exclusivity.

Which intellectual property areas does the article examine in relation to repair?

It analyzes doctrines implicated by the repair movement, including rules affecting repair by individual consumers and copyright implications for repair, as well as how IP may limit repair laws’ effectiveness.

Oct 23, 2026

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