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Patented Seeds
rhh writes: "Seeds and plants grown from seeds are now patentable. Yesterday the US Supreme Court ruled that seeds and seed grown plants can be covered by patents. This is a major victory for companies such as DuPont, Monsanto and others that develop new crop varieties. In J.E.M. AG supply, Inc., DBA Farm Advantage, Inc., et al. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. farmers had sued saying that patents drove the price of seed up. A PDF of the Court's opinion can be found here."
This is really bad! What if I am a farmer planting my corn seed that has been handed down through my family, and some pesky little honey bee brings the pollen from my neighbors field to my field (assuming my neighbor is stupid enough to grow their patented trash). I am screwed, because I can't sell or use my corn anymore, it has been polluted by their patented garbage, but they have the right to call up their school of bottom feeding, scum sucking lawyers and sue me. My pure corn was polluted and they will win the case bacause they own a patent and lawyers. Sounds like another case of let's make sure that the lawyers stay employed to me. But what can we expect when we have lawyers making the laws, lawyers judging the laws, and laywers enforcing the laws.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
It should be interesting to see how things will turn out for society as a whole.
Imagine having a GPL-like ownership on a corn seed. If you were a truely benevolent organization, you could share your ideas with starving villages over seas.
I guess that's no different than now, but in the future there may be more information available to encourage people to try out new breeding. It's similar to creating an OS. Right now there is more information available to more people, therefore it isn't as difficult as it once may have been to role out a new OS.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that from an economic stand point, these patents will encourage companies to make better breeds of food. With more information, more people will begin to breed or genetically engineer their own seed. After that their ideas could be patented in a GPL-like way so that corporations couldn't control how the seed will be used.
On the other hand, it's not as if the world is starving because of greedy corporations. Usually this comes about because of bad politics and bad economics.
It is noteworthy to point out that having one's own patent for a seed, wouldn't really help much if you have trouble getting into these countries--whether it would be because of politics or health issues [such as malaria or whatever diseases are passed by mosquitos].
To sum things up, I'm generally in favour of patents for seeds and such things.
Sincerely, and with thanks,
Eugene T.S. Wong
testing out my trending skills
AAAAAAAHHHH! I had hoped this woulnd't happen. I just spent hours upon hours of my life writing a 12 page Constitutional Law paper over this very case, for this very reason.
A little background-
in 1930 congress said you could patent asexually reproducing plants with the Plant Patent Act.
In 1978 this was extended to Bacteria with Chakarbarty v. Diamond, Chakarbarty patented bacteria that disolved oil.
In 1970 Congress passes the Plant Variety Protection Act. This allows the patenting of sexually reproducing plants. However, some key provisions- Farmers can replant their seed, and companies have to release GM seed to seed banks for research.
Here is the problem with the JEM case- it allows UTILITY patents, the same as on any invention, on Plants. Not only is this CONTRARY to the PVPA, but it gies companies 17 years of exclusive use. The dangers here- farmers cant replant seed. If you dont understand why this is dangerous, you aren't close enough to your agrarian root. Put down the palmpilot and talk to a farmer.
The courts have overturned congressional intent. With todays "conservative" court this is becoming more of a danger. Some scholors would even go so far as to say that Rhenquist is more judicially active than Warren, just in the opposite political direction. Scary, aint it?
This also has wide ranging Intelecutal Property implications. If you can patent plants, how about code? How about your genetic sequence? Can I patent my genes and sue someone that happens to have a very close sequence? If there's much response to this topic I'll post more indepth. like I said, I've got pages and pages sitting on my computer, and waaaaay too many hours invested in this case.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Monsanto sued the farmer for "stealing" seed, he counter-sued Monsanto for "contaminating" his farm with GM canola. You can see a bit of the story here.
The end result? The farmer lost and was fined C$19000.
-AD