What is "Right to Repair"?

Legislation is circulating Congress that would make it harder for small businesses to protect the innovations and intellectual property they’ve invested in. Worse, if they are compelled to share sensitive data regarding products, software, and services used in American military platforms, adversaries could steal it and use it against our country.

“Right to Repair” legislation would disenfranchise American businesses and make our innovations vulnerable to foreign competitors and adversaries.

Congress must go back to the drawing board and create targeted legislation that would help improve military readiness without eroding the protection of trade secrets owned by manufacturers and innovative software companies, and without risking the exposure of sensitive trade secrets to the world.

Contact your Members of Congress today and tell them NOT to support “Right to Repair” – the future of our defense industrial base depends on it.

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As a representative of a business in the defense industrial base, I urge you to oppose broad “Right to Repair” legislation.

Small and medium-sized businesses like mine do not have billion-dollar research budgets or armies of lawyers. Our competitive advantage comes from the ideas we develop, the engineering expertise we build, and the intellectual property we create. Those innovations are often our most valuable asset.

Right to Repair would make it easier for others to benefit from investments they did not make. That is especially harmful to small- and medium-sized businesses. We invest years developing specialized technologies because we believe we will have the opportunity to compete based on our innovation. If those protections are weakened, the business case for making those investments becomes much harder.

Congress has repeatedly said it wants to strengthen the defense industrial base and bring more innovative businesses into the defense marketplace. Right to Repair legislation would have the opposite effect. It would create uncertainty for companies like mine, discourage investment in new technologies, and make it more difficult for small- and medium-sized businesses to compete against larger firms with greater resources.

This overreaching proposal could also slow down the acquisition system rather than improve it. Expanding access to proprietary technical data or software will create new disputes over data rights, increase compliance burdens, and make contracting more complex. That means more time and resources spent on lawyers and paperwork and less time spent designing, building, and delivering the world’s best capabilities for our military.

Small- and medium-sized businesses want to support the warfighter. We also want repair and sustainment to be as efficient as possible. Those goals can be achieved without weakening the intellectual property protections that allow innovative companies to survive and grow.

Congress has already directed the Department of War to evaluate whether gaps in access to technical data are affecting military readiness. That work is not yet complete. Congress should not weaken intellectual property protections, especially before the Department of War has demonstrated that such drastic steps are necessary to solve an identified readiness problem.

I respectfully urge you to oppose broad Right to Repair legislation and instead pursue targeted, evidence-based reforms that improve military readiness while preserving the innovation, investment, and entrepreneurship that America’s small- and medium-sized defense businesses provide every day.

R2R-advocacy

What is "Right to Repair"?

What is "Right to Repair"?