I do not know what current OEM maintenance contracts say, but I wonder whether there is some question about software licensing, upgrades during the contract period, including “upgrades” that restrict service/diagnostic tool access more than was present when the elevators were first installed or put under maintenance (possibly under the guise of “fixing problems”).
Building owners probably don’t have any way to make a copy of the as-sold software, or the ability to revert back to it if they wanted to. I imagine there’s legalese that is buried in the contracts that few people read carefully enough to understand the full impact, but which probably favors the OEM.
Any sort of behavior “on the way out the door” that leaves the elevators unmaintainable by others seems ethically and legally questionable, but until there’s a case before a court of law that successfully calls this out and awards damages for the building owner, creating a legal precedent, it may be an uphill battle against an multi-billion-dollar OEM with all the legal power on their side.
