· Statute · 9 sources
Oregon banned parts pairing in 2025. The act's enforcement section applies from July 2027
Four write-ups of Oregon's repair act mostly got the dates right. Only one of the four carried both of the things that matter: the prohibition has bound manufacturers since January 2025, and the act's own enforcement section does not reach violations 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 act’s own remedy does not apply. 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 the act itself gives the Attorney General the means to enforce.
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 last page of the act 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 6 applies section 1 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.
The act has since been codified in chapter 646A of the Oregon Revised Statutes: section 1 is now ORS 646A.850 and section 3 is ORS 646A.859, with section 7 carried as a note beneath it. Two 2025 acts amended it. Chapter 139 added an exclusion for alarm systems, and chapter 290 renamed “consumer electronic equipment” as “consumer equipment” and brought complex rehabilitation technology, such as power wheelchair systems, inside the act. Neither changed the January 2025 start of the prohibition, section 3 or the July 2027 date, and the 2026 session’s table of amended sections touches none of them. The quotations above are from the act as passed in 2024.
How it has been read
Four accounts of the law, published between March 2024 and May 2026, 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 equipment manufactured for the first time, and first sold or used in Oregon, after 1 January 2025. That is correct too, and it says nothing about 2027.
Consumer Electronics Daily, in a state-by-state legislative history published in May 2026, is the only account of the four that carried both halves: “The parts-pairing prohibition applies to covered devices manufactured after January 1, 2025; enforcement begins in 2027.” It does get one date wrong, giving the signing as 28 March 2024 where the act records the Governor’s approval on 27 March. The same page also says that “Oregon’s parts-pairing ban was diluted with a two-year enforcement delay to 2027”. That is the line 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 whose own remedy is switched off 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” and 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.” PIRG’s senior right to repair campaign director, Nathan Proctor, said that “Oregon has passed the best bill yet”. 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, on the day the House passed it, called the bill “the first in the nation to prevent the practice of 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 26 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 the act carries penalties is being told something that applies to violations from 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. Only one of the four carried both what the law forbids and when the act’s own remedy starts. The same test applied to the EU’s repair directive turns up a ten-year spare-parts rule that the directive itself does not contain.
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.