Ford Tries To Shut Down Independent Repair Tool With Copyright

At EFF, we think people ought to be able to understand how their devices work and repair them without asking permission of the manufacturer. We also think independent repair companies should to be able to compete with manufacturers in the aftermarket. Simply put, you should be able to fix your stuff or choose someone you trust to do it for you.

The Ford Motor Company, however, takes a different view. It recently sued Autel, a manufacturer of third-party diagnostics for automobiles, for creating a diagnostic tool that includes a list of Ford car parts and their specifications. Ford claims that it owns a copyright on this list of parts, the "FFData file," and thus can keep competitors from including it in their diagnostic tools. It also claims that Autel violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by writing a program to defeat the "encryption technology and obfuscation" that Ford used to make the file difficult to read.

We’re pretty skeptical of Ford’s claims. Mere facts and data cannot be copyrighted, but sometimes a "compilation" of data can be—if the selection and arrangement are sufficiently creative. It seems unlikely that Ford broke new creative ground when deciding which parts to include in the database and the order in which they would appear. Ford does allege that it included fictitious part descriptions in the database, but that’s probably not enough to pass muster...