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Monsanto Plant Patent Case Winds On
srw writes "A follow-up to a slashdot story from two years ago: The Supreme Court of Canada is willing to hear the case of Percy Schmeiser -- a Saskatchewan farmer accused of violating Monsanto's IP by growing their patented canola. This article contains more background."
If she wan't selling the granola, what is the problem?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
I wish the public could nail Monsanto to the wall for producing this horribly altered crop seed, then spreading it maliciously throughout the country. Other farmers have been afflicted with cross-pollinated GMO crap too, rendering crops unsaleable to the EU, for example.
I hope Monsanto loses this case badly, even if the farmer himself is a dick for growing the sh*t purposefully.
But seriously folks, better read the "pissed off seed company's" side of the story before getting up on the soap box.
I bet that farmer couldn't wait to get his eager little sweaty palms on that "Round-up Ready" canola strain. It sounds soooo tasty.
Eat less GMO :-)
Interesting how they test for the plant - spray the crop and if it dies you're innocent.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
This is a classic micocausim of why all patents are bad in general, and why arguments like the "inventor has no inventive" ... and arguments like nobody "would invest in such and such research" and "no pharmacutical would spend R&D for cures" without a patent, are bullshit. (excuse the language, but I'm tired of being spoonfeed this garbage) People just assume it's true without even thinking about the range of consequences patents cause, and then try and ram them down everyones throat.
All we've heard is that the GE plants were growing in a ditch & they contaminated his crops. Here are the court decisions. My basic understanding is that they're arguing about different things... so yes Monsanto should keep it's IP rights (whether this is a good thing or not is a different discussion) and yes, farmers shouldn't have to suffer from contaminated crops.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Monsanto's claim was originally that he arranged (barter or sale) to have a monsanto-licensed farmer give him some of their roundup-ready seed (in violation of contract). Schmeiser claimed that it had appeared on his land, and he had the right to do what he wanted to with his crop. The (lower) courts decided that it didn't matter how the seed had landed on his land.. Monsanto had a patent on the seed, and nobody not licensed by them was allowed to use seeds with those genetics.
Think this a little further. Think of a second company selling genetically altered canola seed to a farmer, and again some of the seed falls over to a neighbour. But this time this farmer isn't using his own seed but Monsanto's. Then you have a farmer with Monsanto seed contamined by another seed. Which decision should the court make now? Handing over the contamined seed to Monsanto (because it violates Monsanto's patents)? Or handing it over to the other company (because it violates their patents)? Or part it half-by-half and giving 50% to each company? Shall both companies now start to sue each other for violating patents?
What the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is to Moe's Bar.
Both are corrupt in their own way, but the scope of the potential damage, the feasibility of remedying the problem, and the immorality (if any) of Microsoft pales in comparison to Monsteranto. The latter has been on so many people's hit lists for years before Microsoft even existed, and for many good reasons. Just google around, you'll see what I'm talking about. This is by no means the first case where they've tried to pull something like this. If there's ever a "new American revolution" Monsanto should be the first corporation to lose its charter. Boston corn party, anyone?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Here's where it gets really screwy - Monsanto is claiming ownership of a genetic sequence which, when grown in conformance with the natural lifecycle of the plant, WILL SPREAD. I don't mean in a laboratory, or an isolated test field, I mean if you throw the seed into a field, little vectors of genetic contaimination (pollen) will spread. You can't get a pure-bred version of the crop, because the plant evidently is sterile in certain situations, but given that the farmer is being charged with having seeds that are partially bred from Monsanto property, it means that the plants can pass on their genetic material to a certain extent.
So, am I supposed to now make sure your IP doesn't find itself into my materials? How? Am I supposed to test the genetic sequences of ALL the plants that I have? This isn't a case where I'm going out and collecting YOUR IP in order to grow new plants - this is a case where your IP is contaminating my plants as a normal course of operation.
For example, this would be like a company which writes a computer program, that during the normal course of operations, spawns a virus that infects other programs on your hard drive. One of the programs that it infects is your compiler. Can this company now sue to get revenues for the programs you write and distribute that are compiled with this infected compiler? After all, this infected compiler now incorporates their IP...
from another perspective you might find Palladium, patents, and DRM are actually positive things that foster innovation and artistic expression.
.NET - risks need rewards
its the same with IP protection of GM food. If these foods actually do improve crop yields and feed more people for less effort - then the companies that develop biotech need to get a fair reyrn for the expensive R&D they provide (or other companies won't bother to do futher work)
you slashdotters seem to think science is still being done in garages - well its not, these days it costs billions to produce something radically advanced like a GM food, blockbuster movie, or
sorry for the rant there
love, peace, hope, dock
miguel
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
Sympathy? For Percy Schmeiser?
:|
I used to live in the same area of Saskatchewan as this man, and let me tell you this, there aren't too many people that actually know the guy who are feeling *any* sympathy for him. He's a snake-oil salesman and a get-rich-quick bum. All his life he's done nothing at all productive, and now suddenly he's put on the "poor, overworked, underpaid, threatened-by-the-man farmer" act? Pfft. May he get what's coming to him.
I also realize there is a good chance this will secure me some bad karma, but I'm honestly not trolling
Obviously Monsanto is at fault here. They are honestly trying to argue that seeds can be controlled by humans. Heck, humans can't even control the seeds in their own loins, much less ones growing wild in the wind and water.
Monsanto can't prove that they didn't contaminate his field, and they are shaking in their large, multi-billion dollar boots because a farmer from Saskatchewan is about to bring part of them down.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Now that there is growing talk of gene therapy for humans, these cases will be of more consequence than IP and agriculture alone.
Suppose your body has been subjected some years from now to patented gene therapy.
a) what kind of usage restrictions would companies dare to claim on their IP? Will it be possible that they'll ask you to remove the patented gene from your body if, for example, you stopped paying them monthly treatment fees?
More likely,
will they introduce combinations of "gene therapy+required antibiotics" similar to what happens with crop seeds [when you buy a GM crop because it is resistant to an, also patented, herbicide]. The implications would be that your survival could be at risk if you stop taking the supplemental medications that make it possible for you to live with the "therapeutic" gene. By raising the prices of the supplement a pharmacorp could "drive out of business" gene therapy patients who no longer could pay for the supplement or (more likely) loot the treasury if the patients are on Medicare. Would any representative dare to vote against dishing out funding for the supplement if this vote threatens lives of current patients?
b) What if the therapeutic genes find their way into your children (even if they weren't supposed to). Would your children have to pay fees to the pharmacorp? Would you have to pay a license fee to have children?
In case-based judicial systems current developments in GM patent cases will set the stage for what scale of wrongdoing will be allowed in the future when GM touches us even more personally.
50 to 100 years from now when company "X" is granted a patent on blue roses. Some start growing in your garden one day, that'll be $19.95/month please, or we'll have the ATF come burn your yard down (and kill your family if you resist or live in Waco).
Mendel's descendents (OK, he was a monk, so relatives' descendents) will be sued retroactively for IP theft, every farmer with a spreadsheet will be put in Federal Prison for life in violation of the DMCA.
I voted for these guys when, exactly?
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
The thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that Monsanto isn't being held responsible for contaminating Percy's field. I think clearly he made the decision to keep the Roundup resistant plants, but the Monsanto seed had essentially polluted his crop.
If I decide to patent toxic waste can I sue a farmer when it ends up on his field? It makes more sense to me to allow patents on higher organisms because they can't spread corporate IP rights as easily. If Harvard was given their patent on the mice, how would the courts react if they released them into the wild and started suing people for the content of their mousetraps?
For example, this would be like a company which writes a computer program, that during the normal course of operations, spawns a virus that infects other programs on your hard drive. One of the programs that it infects is your compiler. Can this company now sue to get revenues for the programs you write and distribute that are compiled with this infected compiler? After all, this infected compiler now incorporates their IP...
Except for the virus part, that's pretty much what the GPL does for you, if you use a GPL'd compiler with GPL libraries (such that your code won't work without those libraries) then you must GPL your code. (question 2)
BB
He is not arguing that the plants growing in his fields in 1998 were a case of accidental contamination. He's claiming only that he originally got his hands on the seeds by taking advantage of some accidental contamination.
This misrepresents the situation. Yes, he knew there were patented genes in the crop, but he was doing what he had done every year for a couple of decades - taking seeds from one year's crop to plant the following year. He believed his own crops were superior to others in the district because he was essentially running his own breeding program.
He never sprayed Roundup on the canola once it was planted, which it the whole point of the Monsanto modifications. In fact he was an organic farmer - he didn't even want the genetically modified stuff there. Thus he gained no advantage from the presence of the Monsanto patented genes, so there is no question of him "taking advantage" of the situation.
The outcome is that he was not permitted to go about his business as he always had - once he knew there were Monsanto genes in his crop, he could never use seeds from that crop again.