No modifications should be allowed during repairs.Ottawa—A Liberal MP's bill to allow owners to fix hi-tech equipment needs to be enhanced to provide for case by case assessments of when and what can be independently repaired, the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada (IPIC) has told the Commons industry committee.To make the right to repair bill from MP Wilson Miao effective and in compliance with international agreements, it needs to create a framework for case-by-case assessments that consider the risks and benefits of repairs conducted by other than the equipment's manufacturer, says Catherine Lovrics, Vice Chair of IPIC's Copyright Committee.“A robust framework would involve other areas of law, with provinces at the forefront of facilitating a meaningful right to repair,” she said. IPIC will be proposing amendments to the bill, which Miao has said he is open to.IPIC is the professional association of lawyers and patent and trademark agents in all areas of intellectual property.She said the right to repair concerns involve technological protection measures (TPMs), which since 1997, Canada has recognized as indispensable to protecting copyright. It now also views legal protections for TPMs as integral to the digital economy.TPMs now are regarded as vital to ensuring “health, privacy, safety and environmental standards are maintained once products are in the hands of consumers. Through various copyright treaties, Canada not only has agreed to protect TPMs but has agreed that any exceptions to TPM protections should be very carefully crafted, supported by evidence and focused narrowly to ensure TPMs remain effective,” she said.IPIC believes amendments are needed for the bill to comply with various treaties and trade agreements. “We are concerned with the blanket approach taken in the current bill and unintended consequences that may follow.”IPIC agrees with Miao that a right to repair framework is required and it “supports evidence-based exceptions that permit circumvention of TPMs to enable a right to repair. We recommend that goods that benefit from the exception be specified in regulations, subject to a framework that assesses the specific use case.”IPIC will propose a regulatory framework that would enable independent repair when the TPM is “indeed demonstrated to have an adverse impact that warrants circumvention and that enabling access to computer programs would enable repair and not copyright infringement and that circumvention does not carry risks to health, safety, privacy and security.”Such a framework would comply with our treaty obligations, better align with our trading partners and manage other risks, all while aiming to achieve the government's policy objectives, she said.Any TPM exceptions should not enable distribution or trafficking in circumvention tools and that the bill be amended to instead enable service providers to exercise the right to repair on behalf of consumers.While witnesses have told the committee about the importance of enabling a robust after-market repair service industry, the bill does not provide an exception for service providers, Lovrics said.The bill also needs “to ensure that what constitutes a repair is understood to be the proper functioning of a product according to its approved specifications. We believe it's important to be clear that the bill enables repairs and not modifications,” she said.As TPMs are an essential safeguard to the digital and connected economy, exceptions should ensure repairs are safe, do not risk health, personal injury or property damage and that they maintain security, such as protecting the personal information of Canadians and preventing interception to gain unauthorized control over a consumer product.