The Uneasy Case of Programmed Obsolescence

This article is an attempt to understand the context of how the concept of programmed obsolescence emerged and evolved to slowly make its appearance in today’s legal landscape. Programmed obsolescence is generally understood as the engineered, premature breakdown of a product to trigger its replacement by its own maker. This essay, first phase of a four-year project, aims at describing the genealogy of the concept of programmed obsolescence. The ambition here is to revisit common places of obsolescence, from its acceptance in Bernard London’s famous pamphlet to the popular tale of the reduced life of the light bulbs. The history and early manifestation of programmed obsolescence tells a compelling story about consumption and the contradictions of capitalism. To keep the wheels of the economy turning and workers active, more goods must be purchased. Innovation and competitive consumption are thought to be conditions of progress. Programmed obsolescence seems to bring the question of durability to another level which goes beyond the jurisdictions of consumer law and its policy objective of informed choice and of commercial law. By being indissociable from obsolescence, the production of waste becomes a matter of environmental law and brings to the fore social concerns. Until obsolescence became associated with environmental concerns, the law did not develop the antibodies for a phenomenon it generally perceived as legal.