· Statute · 7 sources
Oregon banned parts pairing in 2025. Nobody can enforce it until 2027
Four write-ups of Oregon's repair act mostly got the dates right. None separated the two things that matter: the prohibition has bound manufacturers since January 2025, and the remedy attached to it does not arrive until July 2027.
The short answer
Oregon’s Senate Bill 1596 has prohibited certain uses of parts pairing since 1 January 2025. The section of the act that lets anyone do anything about a breach, section 3, does not apply to violations occurring before 1 July 2027. For two and a half years the prohibition binds and the remedy does not exist. That distinction is not in most accounts of the law, and it is the difference between a rule a manufacturer must follow and a rule a manufacturer can be made to follow.
Where this comes from
This piece rests on the enacted text of Oregon Laws 2024, Chapter 69, and on four published accounts of it. I have not tested a device, contacted a manufacturer or spoken to anyone in Oregon.
One thing about the sourcing should be said plainly rather than buried, because it shaped the piece. The Oregon Legislature’s copy of the session law could not be reached. Requests to oregonlegislature.gov timed out from two separate machines on my connection and returned errors through three commercial proxy services; LegiScan, Justia and TrackBill each refused; and the public.law mirror of the Oregon Revised Statutes does not yet list the sections this act added. The text quoted below comes from the Internet Archive’s snapshot of the legislature’s own PDF, taken on 1 May 2026. Every quotation can be checked there.
That is worth knowing when reading any coverage of this law, including this piece. A statute nobody outside a jurisdiction can conveniently open is a statute that gets described more often than it gets read.
What the act says
The definition matches Colorado’s, word for word:
“Parts pairing” means a manufacturer’s practice of using software to identify component parts through a unique identifier.
The prohibition, at section 1(2)(b):
For consumer electronic equipment that is manufactured for the first time, and first sold or used in this state, after January 1, 2025, an original equipment manufacturer may not use parts pairing to:
- (A)
- Prevent or inhibit an independent repair provider or an owner from installing or enabling the function of an otherwise functional replacement part or a component of consumer electronic equipment, including a replacement part or a component that the original equipment manufacturer has not approved;
- (B)
- Reduce the functionality or performance of consumer electronic equipment; or
- (C)
- Cause consumer electronic equipment to display misleading alerts or warnings, which the owner cannot immediately dismiss, about unidentified parts.
The act’s own front page records: “Approved by the Governor March 27, 2024. Filed in the office of Secretary of State March 27, 2024. Effective date January 1, 2025.”
The wider repair obligations reach a good deal further back than the pairing rule. Section 2 applies the act to equipment sold or in use in the state on or after the effective date, then excludes:
- (a)
- A cell phone that was manufactured for the first time, and first sold or used in this state, before July 1, 2021; or
- (b)
- Consumer electronic equipment other than a cell phone that was manufactured for the first time, and first sold or used in this state, before July 1, 2015.
So a laptop first sold in Oregon in 2016 is inside the act for parts, tools and documentation. It is outside the parts-pairing prohibition, which starts nine years later.
The section nobody quoted
Section 3 is the enforcement mechanism, and it is the only one the act contains. It has two limbs. The first gives the Attorney General an investigative demand, which can require a person to:
- (a)
- Appear and testify under oath at the time and place stated in the investigative demand;
- (b)
- Answer written interrogatories; and
- (c)
- Produce relevant information, documents, physical evidence or other material for examination
The second is the penalty:
If the Attorney General finds in response to a complaint from a consumer that a person has violated section 1 of this 2024 Act, the Attorney General may bring a civil action in a circuit court of this state to:
- (a)
- Impose a civil penalty of not more than $1,000 for each day in which the violation continues; or
- (b)
- Obtain an injunction to restrain the violation.
Then, at the end of the act, section 7 in its entirety:
SECTION 7. Section 3 of this 2024 Act applies to violations of section 1 of this 2024 Act that occur on or after July 1, 2027.
Read together: the prohibition in section 1 has applied since January 2025. For any violation before 1 July 2027, the Attorney General has no investigative demand, no daily penalty and no injunction under this act.
Whether some other route exists is a question this piece does not answer. Section 3 cross-refers to Oregon’s general unfair trade practice provisions for how a demand is served and enforced, and I have not researched whether those offer an independent path. The narrow claim here is the one the text supports: section 3 does not reach violations before that date.
How it has been read
Four accounts of the law, all published within days of it passing or since, and all checked against the enacted text.
iFixit reported that the parts pairing provision “goes into effect for products made after January 1, 2025” and that the wider obligations apply to products “produced as far back as 2015”. Both are correct. PCWorld reported that it takes effect “starting in 2025 and applying to some hardware as far back as 2015”, which is also correct. Compliance & Risks reported that the prohibition applies to devices manufactured after 1 January 2025 and that enforcement begins in 2027, which is the only account of the four that carried both halves.
Waste Dive described the parts-pairing ban as having been “diluted with a two-year enforcement delay to 2027”. That is the one that misleads. The ban was not diluted. Its scope, its wording and its start date are unchanged. What section 7 defers is the remedy, and the difference matters to anyone deciding what to attempt this year: a diluted ban is weaker law, while a ban with a deferred remedy is full-strength law with nothing behind it for a period.
The people who campaigned for the bill were unambiguous about its strength. iFixit’s Kyle Wiens called it “the strongest-yet electronics Right to Repair bill”. PIRG’s senior right to repair campaign director, Nathan Proctor, said that “by applying to most products made after 2015, this law will open up repair for the things Oregonians need to get fixed right now. And by limiting the repair-restricting practices of parts pairing, it protects fixing for years to come.” Gay Gordon-Byrne of The Repair Association said Oregon had improved on the laws in California, Minnesota and New York “by making sure that consumers have the choice of buying new parts, used parts or third-party parts”. Consumer Reports called it the first in the nation to prevent software parts pairing.
Not everyone agreed. Eric Fruits, director of economic research at the International Center for Law and Economics, wrote in the Oregon Business Report on 27 February 2024, while the bill sat before the House Committee on Business and Labor, that the bill was well meant but that “this legislation risks unintended consequences that could ultimately harm consumers. Lawmakers should proceed cautiously.” The centre’s funders include technology companies, which is worth stating alongside the argument rather than instead of it.
The manufacturers did not line up on one side. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported in February 2024 that a Google representative had testified the proposal was “an inclusive compromise” compared with earlier versions, while Apple, which had supported a similar California law the previous year, did not signal support for this one.
What it means for you
If you own a device in Oregon, the prohibition already covers you, provided the device was first sold or used in the state after 1 January 2025. Nothing about the July 2027 date changes what a manufacturer is permitted to do to your device today.
What it changes is what happens if they do it anyway. A complaint to the Attorney General about conduct occurring now has no statutory remedy attached to it under this act. From 1 July 2027 the same conduct exposes a manufacturer to an investigative demand, an injunction, and a penalty of up to $1,000 for each day the violation continues.
For a repair business the practical read is that the law is worth citing now and worth relying on later. A manufacturer told that its behaviour is prohibited in Oregon is being told something true. A manufacturer told there will be consequences is being told something that becomes true in July 2027.
And if you are trying to work out which account of a repair law to trust, this one is a reasonable test case. Three of four published accounts had the dates right. The gap was not in the dates. It was in nobody separating what the law forbids from what the law can do about it.
This act’s parts-pairing prohibition is a state law aimed at manufacturer software. It is a different thing from Apple’s Activation Lock, which now also governs whether a salvaged part will calibrate - that is a security feature, not a pairing restriction, and it operates regardless of what any state’s parts-pairing statute permits.