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Cancer Mouse Not Patentable in Canada
Proaxiom writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting the Supreme Court of Canada ruled today that OncoMouse, the so-called 'Harvard Mouse' that is especially prone to cancer, cannot be patented under Canadian law. The hapless rodent still enjoys patent protection in the U.S., Japan and much of Europe. So there is at least one place where higher life forms cannot be patented, but I am not familiar enough with the intricacies of international intellectual property treaties to figure out the consequences of the discrepancy. I'm sure countless IANAL's will be willing to offer opinions."
Yes it was. Whether he was aware of the way in which his plants had been changed is irrelevant. He didn't ASK to have them changed. It happened through the actions of other forces not under his control (his neighbors, the wind, and Monsanto. The plants in question were HIS OWN. Monsanto ended up vandalizing his crop, so to speak.
If I steal a can of spray paint and use it to spray grafitti on your house, you shouldn't be obligated to pay the store for the paint should you choose to keep the grafitti in place.
"10x less population" would only make mathematical sense if it was possible for Canada to have a negative population. (With Canada having negative 9x as many people as the US.) I'm not even sure what a negative population would mean (people made of antimatter?) I think you meant "One tenth the population", which isn't the same thing.
And the population density has nothing to do with why Canada's legal system has more grey areas. Canada's legal system is more grey because it is more directly derived from the British system, which is more grey than the US system. And Britain most certainly isn't less densely populated than the US.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
So you're saying the right course of action would have been for the farmer to cull his OWN CROP of the plants that had been accidentally contaminated, and deliberately choose to only use those seeds that had not come from Monsanto-contaminated pollination? Bull. Keep in mind that the plants that produced the seed were his OWN CROP on his OWN PROPERTY that had been forced to produce the patented seed through no action of his own. So now Monsanto has the right to say any plants that YOU paid for, that YOU cared for, that are on YOUR land that just happen to get cross-pollinated by your neighbor's Monsanto crop are no longer your own plants that you can do with what you will.
If you agree that that's right, then you are agreeing that it's okay for Monsanto to steal ownership ofa portion of a farmer's crop.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Go read his website. He didn't know it was "Monsanto's seed," he never bought seed from Monsanto (preferring to breed his own for the last half-century or so, and he certainly didn't steal anything from Monsanto. In fact, he only found out about the cross-polination when he was trying to eliminate "volunteer" canola growing where he didn't want it and used Roundup.
Experts in the subject already insist that it's virtually if not utterly impossible to find canola, corn, and soybean seed without traces of (patented) genetically-modified genes in them. Monsanto, however, is the big offender, in that it ruthlessly goes after people who wind up with "their" proprietary genes in crops. It's also totally possible to find ultra-hybridized varieties of seed containing more than one company's proprietary genes. That comes from natural cross-polination, and other forms of non-crossbreeding contamination, not theft.
All of which just blatantly shows why this Supreme Court decision is a good idea, and why Mr. Schmeiser should get Monsanto to pay through the nose for wrecking his organic hybrid canola variant with their genetically modified strain. I wonder if this court case will help?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.