[nine_k]

You can repair what you own.

Most commercial software is rented, not owned. Your iPhone's hardware is yours, but the iOS it runs is Apple's, and whatever runs in the baseband processor may belong to some third parties like Qualcomm.

But if you own a copy of software, you usually can patch it to your heart's content. Selling patched copies may be a different deal. (Of course, easy with open source.)

[vizzier]

Not a US ruling but in the EU courts in 2012 upheld that copyright exhaustion happens even if a piece of software is "licensed not sold". Though many questions still remain and the ruling is pretty old now. [1]

Seems there was also some movement on this in France in 2019[2], though a french ruling I don't see why the same implementation wouldn't be applicable to all EU states based on the above.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license#Ownership_vs.... [2]https://www.engadget.com/2019-09-19-french-court-valve-steam...