at the risk of ridicule, I am a lawyer and this is absolutely correct. there is also nothing you sign at the time of purchase of a CVO that gives the MoCo that right. the parts are yours. as long as you prove ownership, they must provide you replacements. my hunch is that the parts sit in the Dealers basement and come out once a year when they have their "clean out the basement 1/2 price sale"...
I agree (well, probably not about the 1/2 price sale part but with some dealers, who can really say).
The "restricted" parts cannot be sold by a dealer unless he obtains a qualified VIN from the customer. If the dealer didn't provide such a VIN to Harley, or provided a bogus one, Harley would supposedly fine the dealer. Somehow that morphed into if the dealer didn't return the original part they would be fined. I have no idea if that was something Harley told the dealers, or if it's something some dealers made up on their own. Considering how many guys on this site have in fact received parts without turning in the original leads me to believe the dealer's who claim this are wrong. Either that, or a bunch of dealers have been hit with fines by H-D and they just absorbed the fines.
Harley has the right to require warranty parts be returned. In the case of the painted parts, those are shipped back to the part vendor since they are accountable for the warranty. They, just like the auto companies, DO NOT have a legal right to require customers to surrender parts that aren't being replaced at Harley expense.
Jerry