Slashdot Mirror
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."
perhaps there was a mole
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
Thank god the EU has some humanity and dignity left. I praise their stance on GM foods which is basically denying them completely, even wilfully paying fines brought by the WTO to not allow GM food trade.
Why would any nation allow, let alone a single farmer choose to use patented seeds under these restrictions? I'll answer my own question - GREED.
I hope Monsanto looses this one in a big, utterly devastating, way.
Hi,
This is not the only case going on right now - check this one out:
Farmer sent to prison over cotton seed
I'm personally not against GM-plants because they can help reducing the enviromental load, but this kind stories are very scary. A typical farmer has similar chances as a snowball in hell in to win a case against a Megacorp like Monsanto...
V.
You grow a plant in a field... plant grows...
Plants produce seeds, which get carried off by
1. Wind
2. Animals
3. Vehicels
then reproduce into other plants.
The answer is obvious
Sue the
Wind for illegal distrubution of IP
The animals for illegal distrubution of IP
The vehicel manufactor for creating a safe harbor for the distrubution of IP
Sue the plants them selves for reproducing without a license.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Honestly, I don't know what the correct decision here would be
OMG!!! You don't know what the correct decision is?????
Let's see, choose between:
Noone being allowed to grow a garden
VS
The profits of a company
Holy shit - you must be an American. Only a born and raised money bleeding capitalist would think that is a hard decision. Geez.
It's common practice in farming to retain seed from each crop to plant in the next year. What Monsanto is effectively doing is denying the farmer the right to carry on a traditional practice. The only thing the farmer is doing purposefully, apparently, is growing from the seed harvested on his own land. That traditional practice needs to be fully protected in law.
And Monsanto is showing absolute and utter ignorance when it claims there is no way for their seed to have escaped in any way. While I can't say whether this farmer "expedited" any cross pollination or cross seeding, I do know from knowing people who have worked on farms in the rural area I grew up in, that such a thing was common. It varied depending on the type of crop. Some crop types could spread their genetics far more easily than others. I do know corn was one of those that was a problem in that area. But it wasn't a big problem in the sense that anyone might get sued because their field got infested from a neighbor's crop. They were more worried that their field might have a mix of different kinds of corn.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Your point about a few companies controlling the world's food supply is very valid and should be of a great concern to all of us. There is a disturbing trend among of the companies that genetically alter seed to desire to produce grains (canola is an oilseed not a grain, but it still applies) that are sterile and do not reproduce. This could be seen as a good thing, since genetically modified plants then cannot "escape" into nature. However, as growing the GMO grains becomes more and more prevailant and traditional strains no longer grown (either because they don't produce as well, or are too tall or whatever), then that makes farmers have to pay for their seed every year, rather than hold back a portion and replant like they used to. Even more effected by this are third world countries who will be completely at the mercy of these companies. They are really worried the trends and "progression" being made by companies like Monsanto.
Just as Palladium, patents, and digital restrictions managenent do not bode well computer and software users, these types of genetic patents are no less negative. I personally have nothing against GMO food and technologies, but I think we should seriously consider the impacts of patenting and controlling such technologies.
I hope the courts rule in favor of the farmer. Until about 5-10 years ago in Canada, there were no IP rights for seed companies. Such rights are contrived and artificial, I believe.
Michael
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?
Copied from e2, (idea) by vectormane, without permission. I hope he doesn't mind. I didn't want to link to e2 because it can't handle the load.
In other words, Monsanto is criminal, arguably evil, certainly negligent, and generally a bunch of right bastards. GM foods FUD notwithstanding, these guys are bad people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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...
You're mistaking capitalism for monarchy. Monarchies arise out of lawlessness when feudal lords accumulate enough power to form city-states, which then coalesce into nation-states, of which they are the monarchs. Now, in the US, we are laissez-faire enough so that we are almost lawless sometimes. Thus, it has been possible for corporate monarchies to arise, forming the market-states. Monsanto rules the agricultural market-state, RIAA the recording market-state, and so on. An ineffective government could allow the market-states to coalesce into a nation-state just as traditional monarchies did. Some argue that this has already happened--that our republic which arose in the wake of a monarchy has been completely co-opted by a loose association of monarchist market-states.
Capitalism, OTOH, is where the government establishes a framework in which a sufficient number of individual actors compete to provide goods and services, but without forming enough power to become market-states. Those who argue that capitalism needs to be replaced, when confronted with the question "replaced with what?" usually have one of two responses: 1. A blank stare, or anger followed by a re-affirmation that capitalism needs to be replaced, or 2. Socialism/Communism/Leftism/"the people". Invariably, "the people" is a euphemism for their people who are almost always Socialists/Communists/... etc.
The truth of the matter is that capitalism doesn't need to be replaced--it needs to be reinstated.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's not a case about accidental/natural seed contamination. That question has already been settled conclusively: natural/accidental seed contamination does not constitute patent infringement. End of that story. (this is covered in the http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fct/2002/2002fca309. htmlFederal Court of Appeal's ruling.) However, Percy Schmeiser is not arguing that the plants in question growing in his fields (in 1998) were an instance of accidental contamination. He is arguing that the came into his hands via accidental contamination (in 1997), but he does not dispute that once he discovered he had it growing on his property and had identified it as glyphosate resistant, seeds were harvested from it and used to plant his next year's crop. Note that the claim against him is "patent infringement" i.e. use of a patented invention without the patent-holder's permission. It is not "illicitly getting his hands on Monsanto's seed". There is no law against getting your hands on genetically modified canola seed. There is, however, a law against planting it and cultivating it unless you hold a patent to do so. Which is why he's lost the first two rounds of the case.
The following paragraphs from the first ruling may be illuminating as to what Percy Schmeiser's position actually is:
[38] As we have noted Mr. Schmeiser testified that in 1997 he planted his canola crop with seed saved from 1996 which he believed came mainly from field number 1. Roundup-resistant canola was first noticed in his crop in 1997, when Mr. Schmeiser and his hired hand, Carlysle Moritz, hand-sprayed Roundup around the power poles and in ditches along the road bordering fields 1, 2, 3 and 4. These fields are adjacent to one another and are located along the east side of the main paved grid road that leads south to Bruno from these fields. This spraying was part of the regular farming practices of the defendants, to kill weeds and volunteer plants around power poles and in ditches. Several days after the spraying, Mr. Schmeiser noticed that a large portion of the plants earlier sprayed by hand had survived the spraying with the Roundup herbicide.
[39] In an attempt to determine why the plants had survived the herbicide spraying, Mr. Schmeiser conducted a test in field 2. Using his sprayer, he sprayed, with Roundup herbicide, a section of that field in a strip along the road. He made two passes with his sprayer set to spray 40 feet, the first weaving between and around the power poles, and the second beyond but adjacent to the first pass in the field, and parallel to the power poles. This was said by him to be some three to four acres in all, or "a good three acres". After some days, approximately 60% of the plants earlier sprayed had persisted and continued to grow. Mr. Schmeiser testified that these plants grew in clumps which were thickest near the road and began to thin as one moved farther into the field.
[40] Despite this rsult Mr. Schmeiser continued to work field 2, and, at harvest, Carlysle Moritz, on instruction from Mr. Schmeiser, swathed and combined field 2. He included swaths from the surviving canola seed along the roadside in the first load of seed in the combine which he emptied into an old Ford truck located in the field. That truck was covered with a tarp and later it was towed to one of Mr. Schmeiser's outbuildings at Bruno. In the spring of 1998 the seed from the old Ford truck was taken by Mr. Schmeiser in another truck to the Humboldt Flour Mill ("HFM") for treatment. After that, Mr. Schmeiser's testimony is that the treated seed was mixed with some bin-run seed and fertilizer and then used for planting his 1998 canola crop.