The ability to repair your increasingly sophisticated gizmo—a coffee maker, vacuum cleaner, cell phone, car — without being forced to rely on the manufacturer is a subject that fascinates Leah Chan Grinvald, the new dean of the William S. Boyd School of Law.
Grinvald, an intellectual property scholar who is also the school’s Richard J. Morgan Professor of Law, has most recently studied the seemingly irreconcilable conflict behind consumers’ right to fix products they’ve purchased and manufacturers’ concerns about protecting their IP rights.
“We should be finding a balance,” Grinvald said. “While I’m nervous about overreach, over-enforcement of intellectual property rights and over-interpretation of intellectual property rights, I have always been a supporter of balanced rights.”
Intellectual property — copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets—can foster an innovative economy. But consumers want the autonomy to make a relatively easy repair themselves with an easily accessible repair manual or take the product to a repair shop in an open and competitive market.
“Manufacturers are utilizing their intellectual property rights in a way that has stymied repair,” Grinvald says. “In some cases, they’re using their rights in a manner which wasn’t really intended in the grant of rights.”
Vigorously pursuing IP protection and enforcing those rights that make repairs so expensive or onerous to push consumers to buy new products form some companies’ business strategy.
“Some...
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