The Copyright Law of the United States provides exemptions specifically for reverse engineering for interoperability. Interoperability was born out of the requirement for computer software to allow people with physical disabilities to enter data into a computer. Software wasn't written to accommodate that, so a provision had to be made for mouth-straw types of keyboards and whatever.
Today in the ag industry and the industrial equipment industry we're seeing these digital interfaces that replace straightforward plain old wire systems that still work. There's no additional functionality with the digital systems that are being employed on the new designs. They're just simply doing it to provide a technical lockout. It can be a wired one or it can be wireless.
As a minimum, the U.S. Copyright Law allows for this reverse engineering for interoperability specifically on farm and industrial equipment. It would still cost us a lot of money for a single adaptation to work around that system. On one of the AGCO products we developed, it cost between $800,000 and $1 million for one product, to put one swather on one tractor. We have a lot of products and a lot of tractors and combines out there, so if we have to do that, it would be completely unfeasible.
Ideally, at a minimum the Copyright Act includes the same exemptions that are provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. The information we've supplied has the link to that U.S. standard, as well as the motivation for it and explanation of it. It's very clear. It's really just clarifying language. It's updating it to be modern to reflect the realities of the industries we work in.
Ultimately, though, we're going to require some form of mandate that equipment be brought into the company with open interoperability as a default position. Ideally, that happens at the federal level, because it affects all provinces.