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Monsanto Wins Case Over Patented Canola
c writes "The Supreme Court of Canada says that you're liable if a plant with a patented gene infects your property. If you recall, Schmeiser claims (and research supports) that Roundup Ready canola seeds infected his own crops. Monsanto prosecuted him for patent infringement." Some other links: Monsanto's press release, Globe and Mail story.
I would have thought that genetically modified crops would be unable to reproduce by some manipulation. I'm quite surprised to hear from the articles and research linked that this is not the case.
I imagine the purists who want full organic food may be surprised that thier food may be cross-polinated with a genetic crop.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I guess this proves that we south-side folks aren't the only ones whose judiciary occasionally suffers from recto-cranial inversion, as shown by these two statements from Monsanto's own press release:
Monsanto originally pursued this case in the Federal Court of Canada because Mr. Schmeiser knowingly infringed Monsanto's patents on Roundup Ready technology by planting 1,030 acres of Roundup Ready canola without paying the required license fee for using the technology.
Ok, you say he purposely planted a strain of seed whose sole claim to fame is that Monsanto's herbicides don't kill it. But then:
However, the Supreme Court determined there was insufficient evidence that Mr. Schmeiser intentionally made use of the benefits provided by Monsanto's technology by spraying his crop with Roundup.
What? The guy planted this bastardized seed, supposedly on purpose, then didn't do the one thing that the seed is good for -- spraying with poison?
No wonder Monsanto sued. They're pi^h^h upset that he didn't buy the matching 55-gallon drums of Roundup. They couldn't have cared less if the guy used the patented seed -- they'd probably give it away for free if they could force the recipients to use their also-patented herbicide.
I'm waiting for someone to swipe some of these Frankenseeds and create Roundup-resistant dandelions. That'll teach 'em!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Perhaps Air? Sorry, you have to have a license to breathe that air! Patenting genes and software are just baaaaad ideas IMHO.
Shouldn't this situation be reversed? The defendant should sue the other guy for damaging his crops!
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
A local man injured by stray gunfire was arrested for stealing bullets.
Unknown host pong.
"By cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without license, [the Schmeisers] thus deprived Monsanto of the full enjoyment of its monopoly." Even better is that for some reason my brain was switched off and I kept reading Monsanto as Microsoft.
in bed.
This really does seem to me to be a sticky issue...
It's impossible for a farmer to build a barrier to stop unwanted seeds from falling in. That's why they have to rely on weed-killing products and such to kill off what they didn't plant. Of course, the most common weed-killing product being RoundUp, and this being something designed to allow the canola to be ready for the use of RoundUp, that solution just plain isn't gonna work.
On the other hand, patents exist to allow companies to profit from their innovations. If Monsanto's patented genes are allowed to escape into the wild, then their monopoly privledge is lost and there goes any reason to create such innovations.
If anything, the burden should be placed on the farmers using the licensed seeds to control their plants so that they don't endup allowing seeds to go "into the wild".
This problem is only going to get worse before it gets better. There's a worse case that hasn't been encountered yet. If the consumer marketplace ends up with genetically modified apples that aren't intentionally seedless, then who knows where those apple seeds might wind up. If that modification turns up to be dominant, then non-modified apple trees are going to have a fight with the force of evolution.
how's the human genome project doing?
ed
Schmeiser claims that Roundup Ready canola seeds infected his own crops
The courts, on the other hand, found that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene.
This "they contaminated my crops" claim is purely for the benefit of the media; he knew that he was planting Monsanto canola.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Would it be legal for someone to come up with a material that only kills Roundup Ready©® plants?
The Schmeissers admitted that they were aware it was RoundupReady Canola (having tested it specifically), and then they saved the seeds & sowed it the next year in their fields. THIS is what they were being sued over, not the fact that the seeds that blew onto their property germinated on their own. It was the seed saving, of known patented seeds that was considered an infringement.
And you may note, if you read the opinion, that the issue addressed was only the patentability of genetically modified seeds.
Thalia
Ok, so i'm liable if i use this seed, known use or without knowing.
But will Monsanto be liable if this genetically altered crop starts causing cancer, or contamination to the water supply, directly or indirectly (like it kills prarie dogs or something, and the prarie dogs carcasses spread disease)? Probably not, they'll litigate their way out of it somehow, I can see it. So if a flock of birds carries the crop seed over to my farm, i'm liable. any indirect harm caused by their seeds and they should be liable too.
So, wind and bees are now Agents of Intellectual Property Theft.
Give me a fucking break.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Can't move to Canada now if Bush is reelected. Is Russia really the land of the free now? allofmp3.com hasn't been shut down yet.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Somehow, I think the environmentalist interests are lined up on the wrong side of this football.
The should have been against this ruling. Effectively, this allows the marketers of genetically modified plants to not place any limits on where the seeds containing their genes go. If they naturally blow into another farmers farm and "infect" their crops, then future generations of their crops will by evolution inherit the modification.
Instead, they seem to be supporting the farmer on the "anything that costs Monsanto profits is good for us" strategy. That's just not right sometimes... any financial loss for Monsanto might slow down their research, but it's certainly not enough to stop the company. The goal should be smart regulation, not elimination...
According to this court, the most advanced patentable life form is higher than canola but lower than a mouse. We will therefore need another ruling before we know if Supreme Court Justices are patentable or not.
--
E_NOSIG
1) Engineer a breed of any crop that will choke out the natural breeds, like a weed
2) Get a patent
3) Toss it over your competitor's fence
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!!!!!!
Frankenfood giant Monsanto sued itself today in what can only be described as absolute lunacy.
Claiming that the genetically modified corn it produced can reproduce itself without human assistance, Monsanto has sued itself for intellectual property infringement under the DMCA.
"It's clear that the corn is a decryption device because it can take the code we gave it and illegally copy itself," said Monsanto's legal head Hebert R. Pufinstuf. "The fact that this deprives us of profits leaves us only one recourse; we must sue ourselves for the profits lost by producing reproducing corn."
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
May 21, 2021: AdmrlTaco writes "The Supreme Court of Canada says that you're liable if a human clone with a patented gene infects your property, citing Monsanto vs Schmeiser."
<insert witty linux comment here>
Farmers in the UK are going to have to be very careful over this one. "Organically" produced crops have a premium price here and one of the requirements to be classified as organic is no GM. If a neighbouring farmer's GM crop gets into an organic farmer's crop, there could well be financial penalties if the source of the contamination can be proven.
Deleted
This has given me an idea for my next evil ploy for world domination:
*insane cackling*
And the family farmer gets screwed once again...
I wonder if I infect another company with a virus that contains code with a copyright, can they also be sued for similar things?
heh reminds me of software accidentally infected with GPL code
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
1. Patent any common technique worms use to spread
2. Sue every microsoftie in Canada
3. Profit
Something that is specifically designed to self replicate, does EXACTLY what it is meant to do and the person who owns the land and air it happens on is the one sued? Backwards thinking, if you ask me.
Lets say, I make a robot that makes an exact replica of itself from simple nuts and bolts. The way it makes a replica of itself is patented. One day that robot escapes and makes 100 copies of itself over at the local hardware store. Does that mean THEY are liable for my ineptness? I can sue them?
In my mind, it should be the other way around, the guy who had this patented crop end up on his land should be able to sue the patent holders for screwing up his property.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Canola is the very definition of hearty crop. It is a 3 foot high plant with yellow flowers and once it is established in an area it is almost impossible to get rid of. One of my earliest memories is listeneing to my dad complain about what the canola field across the road did to our lawn. I have absolutely no doubt that this poor guy never touched "Roundup Ready" seed in his life, he didn't have to.
So if we ever get to the point of inserting modfied DNA into the human genome to "cure" mutations that exist in family lines, will parents have to pay royalties in order to have children? Will it be on a child by child basis or will it be based on the number of attempts at insemmination? If you have a low sperm or egg count, will you get a discount?
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
This is crap. Take a few hundred bags of this stuff and spread all over the place with a low flying plane. Oh, sorry Monsanto but your seed seems to be growing in the wild EVERYWHERE.
In that case, they should have sued Monsanto for contaminating their seeds with unusable seeds. Unless the supremes want to go searching through and picking out all the seeds with little "monsanto" labels on them so they can reseed.
Or maybe those supremes could pay for new seeds rather than just letting the farmers reseed themselves.
The other interesting factoid is that the damages awarded were $0 because the Schmeissers did not spray their crops with RoundUp, thus they did not receive any benefit from the gene.
please check the article -- this farmer had more than 1000 acres planted and 95% was roundup ready canola. You still think it just "blew there"?
So it was emotional distruss of depriving them from enjoyment?
I've yet to see a more trollish headline...
Regardless of how you feel about this case, this guy wasn't caught with a few plants that had blown into his field. He was collecting the seeds from the patented plant and planting them himself.
Personally, I think (shudder) Monsanto deserved to win this case. The farmer was infringing on Monsanto's patent, and this case really is as simple as that.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Now seems like a time to go organic and provide subsidies for it, rather than providing them for over producing then paying again to store the over produced foodstuffs.
This ruling is crazy and I hope it is overturned. Monsanto are evil for even taking this to court. It's like saying Iraqies are responsible for Americans going into Iraq. The person who sent them in is responsible in that case, and in this case the planting farmer should be responsible.
Even better, the tampering scum that create GM crops should be responsible for their abominations.
Rant over, so feel free to flame me to a crisp.
Although in the USA, the day may be closer than we think: we have the Great and Wonderful Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In response to DNA evidence that cleared a man on death row, he said that mere innocence is no grounds to overturn a judgement.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
It's already happening:
7
http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?recid=87
You've got to laugh. Who would have thought that evolution would be developing it's own roundup resistance. Damn that Charles Darwin.
Maybe the Monsanto executives are creationists.
Deleted
Of course you'll be forbidden from collecting seed to replant the next year or doing any breeding experiments of your own, but you don't want to be a PIRATE, do you?
However, Monsato was involved in negligence in that they did not provide adequate protection to ensure that their plants seeds / pollen does not infect the plants on other farms.
Since it is now apparently possible for someone to be sued for having "infected" crops, it is up to the growers of GM crops to ensure that their crops do not "infect" others.
This all means that we are treading in new legal waters so it should be interesting seeing how this all shakes out.
My signature is a pizza.
So what happens when human genetic engeneering comes to fruition and a company owns the genes that you have in your body? Will you then be sued for having a child if the patented genes show up in his or her genome? Or will the child itself be brought to court as a being whose very existance violates intellectual property laws?
While this does seem a little alarmist, it pays to consider the extremes of our laws and policies before those extremes are reached. It would be a great failing of our legistative and legal system if such a case ever even came close to actuality.
In light of it's recent success, Monsanto plans on suing the Sun, rain and Canadian soil for growing canola plants without proper patent licencing. A spokesman was quoted as saying "The forces of nature must be brought to respect our intelectual property."
I mean, L Ron Fucking Hubbard, how can you ban the replication of a self-replicating device! I'm sorry but that is just plain asinine. Not all ventures in this world are profitable and if I have to wait a few more years for Government funded research to develop this these things, then it won't bother me a bit.
One important tidbit from this story that the poster failed to mention was that this ruling also eliminated the payment of damages, because the plaintiff failed to prove that the defendant received any additional profit as a result of the use of the patented seeds.
I quote: Since there was no evidence that he sprayed Roundup herbicide to reduce the weeks [sic], the majority said, there is no way to conclude that he gained any financial advantage.
We don't want you here.
I followed this case quite closely. Despite our highest court ruling in favour of Monsanto, all it would take is this to become an issue in our upcoming federal election (will be called this Sunday), and our patent law will be changed. Once the law is changed, the Monsanto case's precedent will be tossed aside, and we will get back on the right track.
Our (Canada's) patent law is quite out of date, it does not address the issues regarding patenting of genome, plants, organisms, and other living matter. Once it is brought up to date (not when, it would be political suicide for all parties not to protect farmers like Schmeiser), we will get things right.
All parties which are running in every riding have to deal with this the correct way.
- The new Conservative Party of Canada will stand to loose grassroots support if they do not protect the rights of farmers to save seed. Although I wouldn't vote for them because they have yet to release their platform... shuuush... they don't want people to know that yet.
- The Liberal Party of Canada will stand to loose support in Ontario where Schmeiser was situated, although it is slipping because the provincial government did a 180 in the first budget.
- The NDP hates GE food, says there is no viable market for the stuff, it should be labelled, etc etc. They would definitely protect the rights of the farmer to save the seed.
- And the Green Party. This is a given, they don't like GE foods, they don't like GE anything, because it destroys biodiversity.
This is just a temporary setback. The justices here did not fully comprehend the severity of their decision, but they were forced to work within the framework of the laws given to them by Parliament in 1985. Things have changed, and this act of Parliament will be apart of our next election, and will be dealt with the next government.
Isn't that like a rapist billing the rape victim for sexual favors? Or an oil company having a pipeline burst and flood a farmer's field so they charge the farmer for the oil rather than clean up the mess? In what sick and twisted Universe does this make any sense? Justice isn't blind it's a drooling moron.
Canadian Supreme court upholds $25,000,000 against rape victim for patent infringement.
Jane Doe was raped on May 12, 2021 by Andrew Luster, VI. This rape caused Doe to become Pregnant with Luster's child. Since Luster was generically enhanced, and the enhancement was patented, this caused the Doe baby and the process used by Doe to create this child to infringe on Luster's patent.
The court was not convinced that Luster was himself liable for the patent violation or gave consent to the use of the license since the genetic material was obtained by rape and not by a mutually consented transfer.
The court did note that Luster was convicted and served 3 years for the rape and considered that sufficient payment for his negligence in the case.
Fight Spammers!
..what we are surpirsed is that 99% of the population has no clue about the food they eat other than it comes from the supermarket automagically.
We've been lobbying against this stuff for years, for that very reason, it infects our stuff, and then they claim ownership? Huh? Howzzat again?
Just wait. If you are just hearing about roundup ready and cross pollination and infection, wait to you hear about terminator genes and cross pollination. Ohh, that's a goody. Makes a plant live one year, then all it's offspring is infertile. Think on that one for a bit. Think about the winds, how they cross borders, let alone mere fields and counties. Give it a few years once they start using that sort of seed, you'll have one company "owning" the planets food supply, then their stuff will get borken and--not much food at all. It very easily could happen, you aren't stopping the wind.
Lotta groovy short term profits though, until that happens.
After that, can't say. Most likely world class famine at a minimum.
It's refreshing to see slashdotters responding (for the most part) on the obvious absurdity of this situation.
IM(not so)HO, Monsanto is crap.
Their Roundup Ready agreement, required for people to use their seed, includes the following provisions:
1) a $5/lb. "technology fee" for using the seed.
2) the right for Monsanto to come onto your property, unannounced, and investigate your crops for three or so years after you start using their seed.
3) a ridiculous liability for any damage due to violations of the agreement. The farmer is liable for 10s of times of damage actually caused. I think it is 100, but I'm not 100% sure on this point. This includes accidental cross-pollination of others' crops.
(What's even funnier is that research shows these crops neither require fewer pesticides nor produce greater yields.)
Additionally, because of the new trade regulations and the exporting of Western-style trade and intellectual property agreements across the world, six corporations (Cargill, Monsanto, etc...) virtually control the world grain trade. For example, most countries now, including the UK, there are seed registries from which a farmer must choose seed to grow. Trading of seed, a long-time tradition and promotion of biodiversity, is now illegal in the countries that subscribe to these agreements.
Also, after a "mysterious" adulteration too big for any one farmer to orchestrate in India, millions of livelihoods were lost because the government outlawed traditional mustard seed in favor of imported oils... All the while Monsanto is also engineering seeds that genetically terminate after one generation of crops, which would bankrupt the farmers in poorer countries bound by corporate legislation.
In short, corporations have seriously fucked entire local economies with gestapo policies like the one this article is reporting. It's less than funny, and a little bit more than serious.
If you want more information on this topic, I suggest Vandana Shiva's Stolen Harvest. She is a leading activist on these issues, and the book is a fascinating read.
Dismantle globally, renew locally.
If we can patent some of the genes in the corporate execs of Monsanto, can we stop *them* from reproducing? ;)
"It was the seed saving, of known patented seeds that was considered an infringement."
Patents gives one the right to reproduce something. When the object that is patented reproduces itself on MY land, then the resulting product is MINE. That simple. You have NEVER needed a license to USE a patented product. Don't let companies convice you that one does. Copyright people have already come close to convincing the US that you need a license to use software.
The goal of the plant is to grow and reproduce. When it does that, the patented object is doing EXACTLY what the company intened it to do and hence no patent protection should be violated. That simple.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I, for one, welcome our self-replicating robot overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted Slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground iron mines.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My business plan calls for royalties of $199 per common cold, $699 per influenza case, and $2599 per enterprise-class SARS case. Or, you can subscribe to the "malady assurance" program for only $329 per annum; this will cover any and all respiratory tract infections you may acquire during the course of the coverage period.
Look for licensing compliance kiosks coming soon to the cold-rememdy aisle at a pharmacy or supermarket near you.
There's a natural order to things... I eat canola, not the other way around.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
A spokesman said "We're really sorry, what the hell were we thinking, we have no idea what the long term effects of this are, let alone being able to sensible make profit from it. We're sorry; really sorry."
A judge was heard to remark "You ignorant bastards. How dare you play stupid corporate games with the livelihood and future of substanical numbers of people? You bastards are going to fry."
When did I fall through the wormhole ?
No... but the point is that he couldn't have made the transgression of planting the modified canola if he didn't have any.
Somebody minded in preventing the spread of genetic modifications should have asked just how in the world that was allowed to happen.
Canola is also known as RapeSeed...
I very strongly disagree with the idea of being able to patent genetically altered crops, and I'm very suspicious about the motives of companies like Monsanto, but Schmeiser is obviously lying here. A few seeds from your neighbours field blowing across the road can't grow into the volume of crop that he had.
I'm from the same province as Schmeiser and I heard about him long before this whole Monsanto business. A friend of mine worked on a construction project around the area where Shmeiser lives, and Schmeiser was part of a coalition that was concerned about the effects of this project. He was completely uninformed about the entire project, and was an embarassment and liability to the people that were on the same side of the argument as him. Also, if you've ever seen any of the TV interviews with other farmers from around his area you can watch them roll their eyes and shake their heads in digust as soon as his name is mentioned.
The court ruled that the gene and the process to insert that gene is patentable, the plant however, is not patentable.
Patents are monopoly grants. Next time someone accuses you of being anti-globalisation, say that you are pro-globalisation, but that "real free trade means no patents".
Actually, bring along a placard saying "real free trade means no patents" to the next protest march. Few things scare corpies more than the idea that the populace might start fighting the things that _really_ give the corporations power.
BOOOOOOO!
... for Monsanto to be sure their seeds "accidentally" end up on as many fields as possible.
GM crops create a grave danger of third-world farmers being able to feed themselves. This poses a severe threat to the stability of third-world dictatorships who cement their power by keeping control of food supplies donated by first-world nations. In an agricultural economy where people can grow what they need, it's hard to control the food supply, but once you get NGOs involved, everything falls into place: Local producers and distributors of food are bankrupted by free food from abroad. Soon enough, foreign aid is all anybody's got, and it all gets channeled through one corrupt and abusive kleptocracy. Score one for progress!
It's an axiom of the anti-globalization movement that poor nations must be kept poor. Modernity is bad for them, but they don't know enough to choose what's best for themselves. It is our duty, as their guardians, to protect them from achieving a living standard comparable to ours.
This Schmeiser character didn't just have a few seeds here and there. The "research" article linked above says something about 0.25% contamination being possible. This guy's "contamination" was about two orders of magnitude greater. There is no possibility whatsoever that it was an accident.
GM crops weigh more than a duck. Clearly, they must be burned at the stake.
But how did the Monsanto seed get there originally?
If he purposly brought them into his field and planted them then Monsanto has a case. However if the seeds infected his crop from another source, not by his doing, and he was aware of it but still decided to seed his field with seeds from his own crop like he did every previous year than it's another issue entirely.
I stole this Sig
...I was under the impression you had to actually use an invention for what it was invented for to violate a patent. For example if you use a laser pointer to excite your cat then you're violating a patent. But using a laser point for other purposes is fine. But it seems to me that everything I've ever been told by an IP lawyer is bullshit anyway so maybe I shouldn't have believed that.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
when the GM plants will have cross pollinated enough with natural ones, their stupid patent won't ever be enforceable
I don't think nature needs our helping hand but if it can haste things a bit, the better
Actually given their history of Agent Orange and rain forest destruction I would be quite happy with eliminating this particular parasite.
Just in case you're not just posting a smart-ass comment, I'm referring to Organic certified foods.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
So, wind and bees are now Agents of Intellectual Property Theft.
Give me a fucking break.
Actually, you were a victim of Intellectual Dishonesty. Slashdot, as usual, sensationalized the headline to make it seem like that was the case. However, according to the Globe and Mail story:
"The appellants actively cultivated Roundup Ready Canola as part of their business operations," a majority led by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Mr. Justice Morris Fish concluded. [...] Mr. Schmeiser saved the seed and reused it "for production and advantage," the majority noted. "Whether or not patent protection for the gene and the cell extends to activities involving the plant is not relevant to the patent's validity."
So there's a bit more to it than the standard groupthink of "patents bad, evil corporations bad".
Suppose some "radical" activist takes a bunch of patent-encumbered seeds and drops them from an airplane on all the canola fields in Canada. Now, every farm owes massive royalties to Monsanto. There are three possible resolutions to this situation: 1) Monsanto doesn't try to collect (improbable); 2) Monsanto tries to collect and bankrupts every farm in Canada, ruining the entire industry; 3) Monsanto tries to collect, and Canada is forced to provide a subsidy to pay for the settlements, in order to preserve the canola industry.
In any case, the whole deal would be completely fucked. It appears that Canada has just massively shot itself in the foot.
So, anybody got an airplane I can borrow?
He abandoned his failed attempt to say that they "polluted" his crops without his help, and instead tried to claim they couldn't patent it - like higher life forms.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
So Canadian patents are monopolies but American ones aren't. I think I have to agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (one of the few supreme court justices to sport a working brain) when he says that the law is basically whatever the judge feels like saying it is and any kind of explanation of a legal decision is basically a kind of constrained bullshit that's made up after the fact.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Well, we are so VERY sorry, Mrs. Buttle.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Before I say this and start a flame fest let me preface with; I hate Monsanto, they are pretty much satan, I come from a farm near Percy's and have had to deal with Monsanto BS my whole life. That having been said... Percy Schmeiser is full of shit, it's really a shame that this case was the first one to test these laws as it was a waste. Let me tell you what Percy did, he GREW Roundup Ready Rapeseed WITHOUT a contract to do so. Monstanto found out (through really really nefarious ways, more on those if anyone cares to know) and nailed him. He said that the seed must have BLOWN into his crop from the neighbor... the only problem there is it's a little tough to believe that an entire field's worth of RRR blew over at once, and planted itself underground, into nice, neat rows... and just enough for that one field with ZERO spillover into ANY adjacent field. I've seen the field, I know Percy, he's nice, if a little odd, but is totally full of it. I sheeepishly add once again... Monstanto sucks. Cosine
On point 1 above: Even a small famine creates the opportunity for massive NGO-driven damage to whatever portion of local food production/distribution continues to function. If local agriculture is more productive, shortages are less frequent and less severe. The danger of GM crops is that they can boost agricultural productivity by 50% or more. That's a big difference, when you're only coming up 5% or 10% short using old technology. GM crops threaten the livelihood of every NGO working in the famine industry today. When we consider the fact that NGOs are necessary for the well-being of the human race, it's clear that a human race too well-off to need NGOs is a grave threat to itself.
However, another post seems to think that they are supposed to be sterile.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
btw, if some of you think the next logical step is that Monsanto buys both farmers land and start their own company farm, think again, because in a lot of places in Canada (Saskatchewan in particular where the origional case happened), it is illegal for corperations to own farms.
It would not surprise me that the issues raised by this case become so severe, that the Supreme court eventuially overrules its own decision just to restore sanity to the legal system. Here is just a partial list of issues that are raised by this decision.
Do laws and legal precidents dealing with damage caused by livestock extend to patened plants?
Is the "I didn't know" defence become legitimate if it takes a highly trained expert and millions of dollars of equipment to determine if the plant has been pateneded or not?
What happenes if a natural plant is found with the same gene sequence?
what if someone cross breeds a plant with the same gene sequence?
Who is responsible when cross polination occurs in the wild? The owner of the nearest source of the patened plants, or the company who created the seed for not ensuring that is can reproduce normally?
What I can see hapening is that we will get more and more of these restricive IP laws and court cases untill people start complaning too loudly for the clueless politicians to ignore. The poly will then say, "but its out of our hands because its international law and trade restrictions will be placed on us unless we comply." A few years after that, some country will decide that the IP regeme is worse then any ammount of sanctions and change their IP laws to something sane. Shortly after that most other countries will fallow suit.
Put some sidewalk over it. That'll kill it. You don't see any Canola popping out of the Empire State Building...
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
Also, feel free to let Monsanto know what you think.
Perhaps somone should sue Monsanto for tainting / corrupting / infecting their crops without permission?
Isn't allowing your industrial waste to pollute fields downwind considered a violation of environmental protection law?
Monsanto should be in jail, even if this guy did infringe their patent.
Correct, this was a case where he was liable for zero.
This almost sounds like a situation the anti-anything-Monsanto-does forces dreamed up because if they won they would have created another source of "major brand of weedkiller ready" seed that would have zeroed out the worth of the Roundup Ready Canola product's patent instantly. If they lost, oh well, at least they financial damage to them is matched by Monsanto because they each had to pay their own legal fees.
Better yet, this situation made Monsanto file the lawsuit to protect their patent, making them look like agressive plantiffs when really they were just bated into a setup where they had to file...
I was reminded of the classic Canadian novel Who Has Seen the Wind which takes place in roughly the same part of Canada.
Apparently, Monsanto has seen it, and owns it too.
if you don't want to be sued
If something you created/patented invade my home,shouldn't you be liable for that?
Maybe, they can even sue the states or the federal government for laying down the roads that permit such illegal distribution (inter-state, even [gasp!]) of improperly obtained genetically modified food substances.
That dripping sound you hear is lawyer drool.
Does this mean I can sue the RIAA for all those stolen mp3s on my systems?
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
>Roundup Ready canola seeds
FYI... There is no such thing as a canola plant or, by extension, canola seeds.
The term "canola" is a bastardization of "Canadian Oil", used by canadian growers in place of the less consumer-friendly name of the actual crop "rapeseed". The crop isn't refered to as canola until the oil is extracted.
So what you have here is "Roundup Ready Rapeseed", which sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Best laugh in a long while
Sure, it's legal. Why the heck not?
What you probably fail to grasp is the fact that if you use it to kill somebody else's plants, that's a problem, because killing other people's plants is not legal at all. Because they're not yours. Get it?
If I was this guy and they were planting this stuff next to my farm, I'd see if I could help Monsanto out by "encouraging" them to develop a fire-resistant strain of Canola.
Read any good sonnets lately?
anyone have an idea how we can (legally) use our slashdot group power to put a financial hurtin' on these evil evil meddlers?
"Mr. Schmeiser, 74, cast himself as a farmer of the old school who habitually used seeds from previous crops to plant new canola....
He has steadfastly insisted that the seed somehow blew onto his fields from passing trucks or from neighbouring farms...
He said he was astonished to discover that a great deal of the canola in those areas survived his spraying, suggesting that had somehow acquired a resistance to the herbicide. He used portions of the seed from those areas for his crop the following year."
He claims it blew off a truck (kind of like buying a DVD player that "fell off the truck"). Second, he took the seeds from the plants, which was miraculously resistent to Round Up, and then resowed his field with it the next year. 95% of his 1000 or so acres were found to contain this Monsato-frankenstein-canola.
Not quite as simple as Monsato finding a few plants in one field, and sueing him. He probalby woudln't have been guilty at the end of the first year, but the second year, when he re-used the seed, he was.
It is up to the farmers to make the call on this one, but they are the ones with the leverage, if they choose to pull together. Collectively boycott all Monsato products in favour of their nearest direct competitor. If the bulk of western farmers support this guy and refuse to use their products, the boycott will hurt so bad it won't matter what the courts decided, and Monsato will quickly cave in.
On the other hand, (I heard that there were some farmers testifying on both sides) they are largely split on the issue or just don't care, (hard to believe, but possible) then that is their choice as well.
My rights don't need management.
It's not only seeds of bioengineered plants.
With many proprietary seeds, you are not permitted to save some of the harvested crop and plant them the next year unless you have the permission of the company owning those rights.
Do a web search on "Plant Variety Protection Act"
We're all in this together!
Before I say this and start an attack on me let me preface with; I hate Monsanto, they are pretty much pure evil, I come from a farm near Percy's and have had to deal with Monsanto my whole life. That having been said... Percy Schmeiser is full of it, it's really a shame that this case was the first one to test these laws as it was a waste. Let me tell you what Percy did, he GREW Roundup Ready Rapeseed WITHOUT a contract to do so. Monstanto found out (through really really nefarious ways, more on those if anyone cares to know) and nailed him. He said that the seed must have BLOWN into his crop from the neighbor... the only problem there is it's a little tough to believe that an entire field's worth of RRR blew over at once, and planted itself underground, into nice, neat rows... and just enough for that one field with ZERO spillover into ANY adjacent field. I've seen the field, I know Percy, he's nice, if a little odd, but is totally full of it. I sheeepishly add once again... Monstanto sucks. Cosine
Just throw a few seeds or spread a few spores or spray a special coat of some patented genes on some of your competitor's fields (surreptitiously of course, maybe hire someone else to do it); and they'll lose all their crops.
After all, you can't be sure where all the cross pollenation occured, so you'll have to wipe out the entire crop and burn the field to be sure it's gone. While AgriBusiness could afford to fight this, after all they own hundreds of different fields and could lose a crop or two in the name of competition, small/independent farmers would stand no chance.
I think if you were to look into the legal history of Percy Schmeiser of Bruno Saskatchewan you may find that he has spent a lot of time in the court system. Certainly more than me. Perhaps he has family members who are lawyers and like to spent time with them?
My two cents.
That ought to be about as successful as suing Windows users for the problems caused by viruses ravaging their machines to innocent third parties who were smart enough not to use Windows.
Words often have different meanings depending on the domain in which they are used. One such word is "organic". In chemistry, it refers to compounds based on carbon. In agriculture, it doesn't mean that.
Quoth m-w.com:
Monsanto is evil. Very very evil. You think Microsoft or the RIAA are evil? Multiply that by about 200,000 and you might get some idea of how evil Monstanto and ADM are. GM "food" is going to wind up being the next black plague...
All's true that is mistrusted
If a piece of software reproduces itself on my computer, is it mine? =)
~Berj
1. A translation
2. A smack to everyone who modded this up
tongue in cheek but here ya go. The RIAA and MIAA cartels conspire to push onl;y selected music and video. Joe nutjob fan gets addicted to some group, person, or even a character portrayed by an actor, gets obsessed, becomes a stalker. His obsession is increased by seeing how successful and unobtainable his victim becomes with their manufactured success. He goes apesquat, thinks "if I can't have him/her, NO ONE CAN!"
boom or slice or..whatever. whoops.
maybe he wouldn't have gotten so obsessed if his horizons had been widened by hundreds and thousands more examples of art he never saw or heard, because it was so hard to find, because of the monopolistic tactics used.
ya, I know, pretty far fetched. just a "hmmm" there..
zogger
You can't forget Cargill while rounding out your Axis of food evil. Cargill is not public, so they have no financial scrutiny into their evil empire.
Or maybe I'm still sour that they wouldn't hire me, years ago, when I interviewed there.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Quite simply a farmer claims tht Monsanto's seeds had spread to his farms without his knowledge. The case was not whether or not he should pay for seeds blown on to his crop, but whether he acquired these seeds illegally or not.
His crop was about 95% Monsanto wheat. That's why he lost.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
"When the object that is patented reproduces itself on MY land, then the resulting product is MINE. That simple."
However, he didn't just 'let it reproduce itself'. The farmer admitted that he purposely sorted through his seeds to find those that were produced by the Monsanto crops (no idea how - size?, color?) and then replanted only those.
If he'd let some of his field 'go to seed', and didn't take any action to determine which seeds germinated, he'd probably have been OK. However, his deliberate action to sort through the seeds to find the Monsanto ones is what was found to be actionable under Canadian law.
Can you link to WTF you are talking about in your sig?
"his deliberate action to sort through the seeds to find the Monsanto ones is what was found to be actionable under Canadian law."
Then the law is clearly broken, because the seeds are his and if he wanted to set them on fire while doing the disco duck around, he should feel free to do so.
Burn Hollywood Burn
In the case of GM crops, the genes are patented and you must have a license from Monsanto to grow plants with them. Technically, I believe that Monsanto's license -- its EULA, if you will -- specifies that you are not supposed to re-plant seed. But even if you do, you owe the same licensing fees as if you'd bought the seed "direct from the factory." So it really doesn't behoove you to use seed you've harvested yourself, if the quality is going to be lower for the same price.
Breakfast served all day!
I dont wonder about this decesion, as it was predicted by my self, because the biotech Lobby is a marketsector of great interrest, since the often cited Stockexchangeandnevercomeback://www.Bubble.com.cra sh
.. should I make a genetically analysis on how I could file a patent on my genes,
;) )
happend.
A view from Europe/Germany
We here in germany have had a discussion on
how genetically engeneered plants have to be treated, and under which conditions these
plants have to be used in the free nature,
and its the 180 oposite of the
"Canadian Supremecourt" view.
a.
the person who uses genetically engeneered
plants has to take care, that the plants will
not spread by seed and "Pollen (googletranslateisshit::ger)"
this results in the responsibility for installing
wind traps, and "buffer zones" beetween
G.E. zones and neighbourfieldes
b.
if the G.E. plants are spreading, and contaminating the non G.E. plants on a neighbours
field, the G.E.Planter is responsible and has
to pay the damage
Even that 85% of the german people are not willing
to eat GE-vegetables or food which is produced of
G.E.V.,
many tries to plant G.E.V.s are getting sabotaged
by activists
In the EU there has been installed a directive which says if there are => 0.9 %
G.E.d ingridients this has to be marked on the
package
my 0.02 Eur (2 Eurocents)
for what we need G.E. food, for what we even need
patents on things which everyBODY holds inside
itself, genes
I have the property that I dont look as old as
I am, I think these information would be valueable
for people whoms facial skin looks like a skin
on a drum, after the 10th lifting
cheap Nutration for the 3rd World ?
- Do you really think Monsanto would give things
away for no price ? - in my eyes Monsanto is like Microsoft, the price is to be payed later, but bigger than anything else, the price is
a not cheap and special engeneered
agent which affects anything else but the G.E. plant, and the best thing it is patented,
so you are depending on one producer
for seed & agent(fugized,pestized,herbizid)
no alternatives, no way out.
I dont think we need cheap burgers from a
cow with 8 Legs, or a red and restiable tomato which tries to eat me up.
( overstressed
This remark bothered me so much that I had to look it up
...). I read the judgment as basically saying that federal intervention is only justified when a procedural error has been made and not when new evidence is brought up because that would mean re-trying the case. In addition the judgement has a weasel paragraph at the end - that basically says that we also looked at the new evidence and it wasn't that convincing anyway (it was not DNA...)
http://www.txdpinfo.org/issues/herrera.htm
The case is Herrera vs Collins and what Scalia actually says is
"Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the course of the underlying state criminal proceedings."
This is very different from the quote given (it is possible that it might have been said afterward - but although I can't find many secondary sources none quote the original source
BTW I am against capital punishment but for also for being fair.
whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent (emphasis added).
"Then the law is clearly broken, because the seeds are his and if he wanted to set them on fire while doing the disco duck around, he should feel free to do so."
The law may indeed be broken. I was merely pointing out what action of his the Canadian courts ruled on. The court has not yet made a ruling on letting wind-blown seeds self-germinate; in this case, they are ruling on deliberating sorting out and replanting the patented seeds that were blown onto his property.
Now, what if he'd let the seeds self-germinate, then the following year sprayed the fields with Roudup to kill all the non-resistant plants? He'd have the same result, just one year later...
The Good news is that here in Australia, the Populus have rejected GM Canola from Monsanto.m l/gm_food.c fm
http://www.fremantle.wa.gov.au/news/ht
The Federal "Liberal" (Actually Conservative) Government want GM foods so they can get thier Kickbacks, or whatever, The National Party (Country), who are in Coalition with the Liberal Party, want GM Foods so they can have more say in what the Liberal Party Do. The Federal Branch of the Labor Party are against GM, simply because they are the Federal Opposition, and therefore must oppose the Federal Government.
Meanwhile, the State Labor Governments, and non-alligned Local Governments have put Local Bans on Monsanto GM Canola, so even though the Federal Govenment wants it, there is no State, Shire or City in which to legally grow it!
Farmer's who buy roundup ready wheat do so because using it is so utterly cheap compared to the alternatives, despite it's premium price. Farmers who signed contracts with Monsanto new all these terms, or should have.
Second, I'm calling your bluff. GM wheat most certainly dose produce more wheat, or the same wheat at lower cost. Care to pull up that mysterious 'research', preferably from a peer reviewed journal?
Third, Vandana is insane. She rejects all biotechnology. In a particuarly absurd example, she rejects golden rice (GM rice fortified with Vitamin A that would prevent hosts of diseases related to Vitamin A deficiencies in the third world). Her solution? We should run out to the forest and eat weeds for our Vitamin A.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
1. Create a fast spreading Internet worm
2. Sue infected people for copyright infringement
3. Profit!!!
Even if you DO find Monsanto Canola on your land, how the fuck do you get rid of it? It's fucking immune to Round Up!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That would be true in Canada. Our court system is so corrupt you would not believe it.
My wife who is a lawyer has had lots of people come to her with repeat violations and ask her how much this time? When she asks how much for what - they say how much to pay off the judge to make it go away, the last time it was $X,XXX.00 in an envelope on the golf course. She always turned the business away. She gave up the practice of law because it is no longer about the law but about who has the most money.
This is true - I shit you not.
Its actually a technology known to monsanto as "Roundup Ready technology" which comes from the latin "im a fucking poncy shit who needs a slap" and "to fuck a dead pig in the ass". Their press release claims that he did not pay the "required license fee for using the technology". Now i know monsanto doesnt write the law, and they are just like any other compnay - trying to make the highest buck without giving a shit who they trample on so i dont hate them personally, but if a hord of 400 hippies stormed their building and burnt it to the ground i would probably have a smile on my face for the rest of the day. Really what would make me more happy is if the governments and general population would stop selling themselves out and have the slightest moral decency to see how totally fucked up gene-patenting is.
I can certainly see a trend in the future economy: the rich will get richer, the middle-off will get poorer and the poor will get lost. maybe im just pissed off because i didnt think of this first. If i had patented something stupid like "one click sexual gratification" i could have made millions, but i would probably feel guilty knowing how much of a prick i was being (heh)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Canola oil comes from rape seed, which in the Monsanto vs Schmeiser case seems oddly appropriate.
(I haven't RTL) What is Scalia's justification for this? If there is "no basis is text, tradition, or even contemporary practice" to demand that evidence that the courts got the wrong person, why do they call it the "justice system"? In a case where evidence indicates that an innocent person was convicted, the justice system neither protected the people (the real person who committed the crime may still be free to do more) nor served justice (one person is paying for the crimes of another); since these are the primary (if not exclusive) duties of the justice, what is its purpose for existence if not to act justly or catch criminals? (particularly when "just" has no political bias, but is a measure of having convicted the correct person for a given crime, rather than an opinion on either the crime or the consistency of prosecution, etc.)
One of the many reasons I dislike Justice Scalia (or at least his legal opinions)...
In a news release, Monsanto said it welcomed the decision, adding the Supreme Court has "set a world standard in intellectual property protection."
Translation: Canada's SC Justices have just made a massive blunder.
This particular crop is resiliant to a specific pesticide that kills anything else.
Apparently he was using that pesticide on his crops.
It isn't just that he was using the plant, he was using the patented characteristic of the plant.
The patent has to be for something, in this case the patent is for something along the lines of "method to make plant resilient to pesticide XXX".
If he doesn't apply pesticide XXX, he isn't using the method and would likley be safe.
bogus charges & ass covering from their corruption
and illegal activities. For that matter, government and bushco as well.
The name was altered in the 1980s because housewives (understandably) didn't want to buy a product called "rape": http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifcanola.shtml
Your assumptions are invalid. The case was not whether or not he should pay for seeds blown on to his crop, but whether he acquired these seeds illegally or not. His crop was about 95% Monsanto wheat. That's why he lost.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Every year farmers save the seeds from their plants, to grow next year. If his plants where cross contaminated from other patented plants, that then produced the seeds of the geneticaly modified plant, according to your logic he should throw those all out and go spend a load of money on new seeds?
You should have used Roundup (TM Monsanto) on that field.
In this case he should now counter sue Monsanto for illegal use of his land and get retrobution for tresspassing.
Sort of like the guy who got the insurance company to pay for cigars that 'burned up' as he smoked them, but then they got him on charges of arson.
-b
if a hacker just happened to be on your property and used a public wifi access hosted by some one else, you're liable.
Somewhat like saying if an meteor bounces off your property and ends up killing or damaging someone or thing, you're liable.
Man...the Canadian courts have gone crazier than the 9th district court in frisco. I bet that "maple" leaf isn't really a maple.
Justices T---, R--- and S--- (full names redacted as part of the FOIA review) are indeed patented and licensed in perpetuity. They've been genetically modified to have narrow minds and to be susceptible to hypnosis and implantation of suggestions - but only by the F-- (FOIA editing again) News Network and republican occupants of the White House.
The patents have been held in secret, having been classified as "essential to national security".
In a secret project funded by the republican party and headed by biologists from (name removed in FOIA review) University these genes have been modified to insert themselves into your bloodstream (and hence the rest of your cells) when you eat M--- (named removed in FOIA review) patented grains.
Eventually these will take over all the coding parts of everyone's DNA and it will finally be true for most people that :
"All your base pairs are belong to us."
As I understand, the fact that seeds were saved and then replanted was equated to, say, finding a disk of very expensive software development tool, making a copy and then using it extensively to make some product.
Of course there are other questions, that are not so obvious -- situation of repeated cross-contamination (someone leaving a disk with the tool every week), ability to easily distinguish modified crops from non-modified (left disk looks like perfectly legitimate copy with keys etc) and so on.
Hyperom.com
. . . that Canada was a republic, or that bananas would grow so far north.
If company A finds out that a particular gene determines your likelyhood of developing brain cancer, company B can be sued if they test a person for the presence of that gene.
We are already fucked.
Entire generations of women with freakishly large breasts. I... can't... even... imagine...
Oh, who are we kidding? This is a bad thing how?
You're right. That just wouldn't happen by accident. The farmer probably collected the seed from the edge of his field, that was next to his neigbor's Roundup Ready crop. He would know that there would be a good probability that a lot of the seed would be contaminated. Normally I would think that he would take the seed from a section of the field that was not next to a source of potential contamination. It was intentional. That level of contamination doesn't happen by accident. He intended get Roundup Ready plants without paying Monsanto.
Wrong. Check the case law. The use of a patented item can be subject to a license that states how the item may be used.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
His crop was about 95% Monsanto wheat. That's why he lost.
Wow! That must have been a trick. (especially since he was growing canola)
WRONG !!!!
A patent gives you NO RIGHT TO ANYTHING. I quote my IP Law professor: "A patent is a grant from the government that confers upon the inventor the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, importing, or offering an invention for sale for a fixed period of time."
This means that a patent only gives exclusion rights. It does not give you the right to use, sell, import, or offer an invention for sale. A simple example to show how that works is as follows:
Say Boeing has a patent on the airplane (it's a hypothetical situation ok). Now you invent a new type of airplane wing that's cannot be produced without a plane (and that is useless without said plane). The fact that you have a patent for that new wing does not mean you can produce, sell, import, etc. To do that you'd have to produce the plane also and that would infringe on Boeing's patent.
What you can do is prevent Boeing from producing a plane with your wing on it. Then you can enter in an agreement with Boeing to either share your IP or sell it to them, among other options.
Your logic for the plant reproduction not being an infringement is also incorrect. Say I have a patent in the US for a certain invention but I don't in China. I can't exclude a Chinese company from making, selling, importing or offering for sale a copy of my invention if anything of that is done outside of the US. However, if they try to do any of that in the US I can sue them for infringement. I can also sue YOU for infringement if you buy a copy of my invention in China and bring it back to the US to use, sell, import, or offer for sale.
Now this is a oversimplification of IP law but I don't have the time to teach you all of it. If you wish to learn more you can go take classes in college/university or contact a IP Lawyer.
The goal of the plant is to grow and reproduce. When it does that, the patented object is doing EXACTLY what the company intened it to do and hence no patent protection should be violated. That simple.
You have a very insightful point in the using of patented products, but he was 'reproducing the patented genes' by cultivating it. I'm sure if he didn't sow the seeds and let his field lie fallow then he would not been found guilty of patent infringement for any of the stray GM plants that grew. While the goal of plants is to be fruitful and multiply they definitely didn't do it all by them selves in this case - if they had he would not have ended up with a canola monoculture in his fields.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
6 Schmeiser never purchased Roundup Ready Canola nor did he obtain a licence to plant it. Yet, in 1998, tests revealed that 95 to 98 percent of his 1,000 acres of canola crop was made up of Roundup Ready plants. The origin of the plants is unclear. They may have been derived from Roundup Ready seed that blew onto or near Schmeiser's land, and was then collected from plants that survived after Schmeiser sprayed Roundup herbicide around the power poles and in the ditches along the roadway bordering four of his fields. The fact that these plants survived the spraying indicated that they contained the patented gene and cell. The trial judge found that "none of the suggested sources [proposed by Schmeiser] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality" ultimately present in Schmeiser's crop (Mosanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser (2001), 202 F.T.R. 78, at para. 118).
"If you recall, Schmeiser claims (and research supports) that Roundup Ready canola seeds infected his own crops. Monsanto prosecuted him for patent infringement."
I'd say countersue. Now lemme think. Trespassing, pollution, garden disturbance.
(ok, I only read part of the article)
Privacy is terrorism.
According to the actual Supreme Court decision, which you can read at the following location:
Here at Lexum
Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 per cent was Roundup Ready Canola.
I hardly think that seed "infected" the farmer's crop. If more than 90% of the Canola seeds were genetically modified, it seems obvious to me (as it was to the courts) that the farmer knew or ought to have known that the seeds he was using were the roundup-ready variety created by Monsanto.
I was shocked to consider the possibility that the Canadian Supreme Courts (whose opinions I find I've almost always agreed with after reading the decision) would do such a thing, and was relieved to find that Slashdot was, yet again, being Slashdot and over-sensationalising the issue.
I would also like to note that the patent does NOT cover the plant, only the specific gene involved, and that, according to the decision, the farmer may have had available to him a useful defense of innocent intention. Read:
Thus, a defendant in possession of a patented invention in commercial circumstances may rebut the presumption of use by bringing credible evidence that the invention was neither used, nor intended to be used, even by exploiting its stand-by utility.
Seems obvious to me.
The cool part was that the farmer didn't have to pay Monsanto's significant legal expenses.
Move to Canada--we're free here, and our courts don't fuck us unless we fuck someone else first!
A traditional farmer can't avoid this. A farmer who gets most of his seed from his own crops will end up with someone else's patented seeds in his own unless those patented seeds are incapable of pollinating other plants. Contamination of crops is impossible to avoid. Eventually, everyone will be beholden to the holders of the patents. This is insidious and the Canadian Supreme court is insane.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I need some Round Up, I got weeds like crazy in my corn field. How long has this Monsanto been in the weed killer industry, never heard of them!
All joking aside, I dont understand what the difference is between the Higher level life form Mouse and this companies corn. Corn is a form of life, so why the difference in decisions (if it is genetically enhanced)? Tim R
What about M$/Adobe/WhateverBigCorpo suing all the people "using" viruses because they contain some obscure but trivial *patented* algorithm ?
How is this different than stealing a copy of a word processor and not having to pay damages because you didn't make any additional profit on your book since you didn't use the spell checker. They didn't even get to charge him for the seed license. I can kind of relate, if I burn someone a cd full of warez I don't feel bad about giving it to them but selling it to them would be wrong. If they go on to profit from their book or program that they write then they should pay for the license to retroactively resolve their moral predicament.
...taking the best crop and using that to resow your land has been common practice for a looong time. In this case it might have been fairly obvious there was artifical help at work, but if the crops were simply faster, stronger, more full of seeds? Or some gradual build-up? It's not like the seeds come with a patent notice.
It all comes down to intent. Was he deliberately contaminated or not? Did he know it was patented? Or did he believe they had more natural resistance? If he became aware, what should he have done? It wouldn't be his right, but also not his fault he's using it. He should neither profit nor lose from it, in my opinion.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Hey. Moron. This is crop sabotage. If it can be proven that the farmer bought seed and non-Monsanto crops from another source (ie: he kept his receipts) and suddenly his whole field is filled with Monsanto genetics, the Supreme Court has said that that farmer is innocent.
Besides that, if it were ever linked back to Monsanto (and the effort involved in infecting entire fields of crops would be fucking horrendous and thus much more easily traceable) they'd be crucified.
If in the first year the farmer's field is infected (due to no cause of his own) with 1% patented plants, I think we'll all agree that he is blameless.
Let's say that he sprays all of his land with RoundUp so that the only thing left is 100% patented plants. Legal? Of course.
Now lets say he lets the plants do what they do best... grow. And he does nothing more than spray RoundUp every year. As the plants multiply eventually they'll fill his land up with 100% patented plants. Legal? Your first instinct might be to say no, but then you're holding the farmer guilty for doing *nothing* more than watching the sun rise.
The question is if he gathers that 1% and uses it to seed 100% of his crop the following year, is he still blameless?
--Rob
To be honest, most Roundup (glyphosate) resistance is a byproduct of installing another gene. What happens is that the plants are transformed for one reason or another, and a linked gene for Roundup resistance is added.
So, when you try to transform, say, 1000 plants, you take the progeny and grow them on media with glyphosate in them, or spray the seedlings with glyphosate or whatever. The ones that survive *should* have the other gene along with it.
As a result, the plants have resistance to glyphosate AND a pesticide in every cell (BT gene, like Cry or something), or whatever. It's leftover from the transformation of the plants.
Now there are other options- other herbicides that can be used, although most work off of a similar mechanism that involves inhibition of ammonia detoxification (so the plants literally die in their own waste). Another option is to throw in antibiotic resistance (kanamycin, etc.) which will kill plants at a set level- unless they have the resistance gene in them.
Glyphosate resistance is handy, and Roundup is a "nice" herbicide in that it has low toxicity and relatively low environmental life, and it frickin' kills EVERYTHING... that doesn't have artificial resistance, of course. There have been one or two really weird plants discovered that don't have glyphostae resistance, but they're exceptions. The gene comes from a bacterium, IIRC. But there are other herbicides, and they can be employed- they're just a little more expensive, or have some effects that aren't always desirable- like all pesticides.
If they are entitled to license fees for each and every plant grown with the gene in it, they should be responsible for scooping up all the resulting shit resulting from people/animals eating food containing their canola.
Here is a great money making idea. You make a gene that can when put in a humans blood stream become part of the persons cells. The you make it the payload inside a cold/flu germ. Then release it in the wild. Then when people start having the gene show up in their body you sue them for patent infringement. If they want to continue using there body they must start paying you royalties.
The dicks at Monsanto patent these GM crops arguing that these are completely "new" organisms that have never been seen before. Hence they should be granted the patent on them.
Then Monsanto turns around and claims to the public that these organisms are just like the original, only "better", "more healthy". They even fight all attempts to add labeling that would let consumers choose whether they eat GM foods or not.
They argue that the GM foods have not scientifically been proven to be unsafe. The reliance on the absence of evidence the GM crops are unsafe to prove they are safe is rediculous. We don't know what the effects of this crap are going to be in the long term, or how they will effect the natural species of the crops.
Fuck Monsanto. I do not wish to be part of their global "experiment".
Goddamn fucking antichrist monsanto. Now they have not only the govt.(read piece of shit ugly mother fucker, dumbass, pseudochristian KING BUSH and his evil cabinet), but also the Supreme Court in their pocket. God i have a bloody dollar ripped off a 3 year old that i just bludgened...no sorry guess that is Cheney's Halliburton, got mixed up...
Multinational corporations truly exemplify(ok maybe the bastard abusing military also) what is WRONG WITH AMERICA(a selfish country if there ever was one). They need to be reigned in with tight controls. These GM trials are spreading by cross pollinating upto miles away from plant sites. Pretty soon all of our produce(even organic) with start to have fuckin fish and pig genes in them.
I FOR ONE AM SICK OF IT AND WILL DO SOMETHING DRASTIC ABOUT IT IF THINGS DONT CHANGE!
ever watch the ending to Fight Club? GET READY!
There will be a time when those evil corporatists in power will be fuckin shot with their entrails hung from the powerlines, and their heads put on poles in DC.
Here are a couple of anti-GM videos to check out.
One from Krafty.org
And another from GNN.TV
WURD!!
Step 1: Patent a crabgrass variant.
Step 2: Sue the hell out of every poor sucker who ends with MY crabgrass in THEIR lawns.
Step 3: Do I even need to say?
How can it be MY fault if another persons grain infects my property?
All they need is sales guys driving around tossing out handfuls of the seed. Then sue everyone. ( and pretty much disable the crops, as many places wont accept mutated crops ).
Its bad enough the farmer has to write off a years worth of work, but then to be sued on top of that?
Ludicrous.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
He should have to pay the $15 per acre if he was under the license. He probably wasn't under the license and that is why they took the IP angle. It looks like you have to show additional profit gained from the IP to get damages from stolen IP.
If he bought the seeds from someone that he is willing to rat out and who was under the Mosanto license then they affected the re-planting and they should pay the license plus the fines for breach of contract.
I think Monsanto will get into a tough spot because they have to continue to prove the orgin of the seed and the IP moves naturally by cross pollination, not only by devious actions.
This kind of story makes me sick. I remember reading about this case awhile back. An old farmer who has had the same land for many many years and grows ORGANIC CANOLA gets flanked by his neighbours growing Monsanto seeds. One day he notices some strange looking Canola growing in a ditch, he sprays it with Roundup (which he just coincidentally happens to use) and the plant doesn't die. He does some research and finds that the Rounup is a Monsanto product specifically designed not to harm Monsanto produce. He realizes that some Monstanto product has floated over to his farm from one of his neighbours (very possible seeing as 5 people around him grow Monsanto Canola) so he starts spraying futher and further into his field and sees more and more of his Canola perish. This seems obvious: The Monsanto product was being blown in by the wind and the further away from the host field it flew, the less dense the infection. One of his neighbours (obviously not too neighbourly) tips off Monsanto that this guy is illegally growing the seeds without purchasing the license. One day in the near future, a plane flys low over his field and dumps a bunch of Roundup (or a similar product) on his field to test for Monsanto product. Monsanto says they didn't do it (I'm sure some random guy felt like renting a plane and buying a bunch of herbicide to spread on a random field). Now Monsanto sues the old farmer for scamming them - enough to put this guy out of business and leave the farm. The guy grows ORGANIC FUCKING CANOLA. The Monsanto strain NEGATES THE ABILITY TO SELL THE CANOLA AS A STRAIGHT ORGANIC PRODUCT. His field was not entirely Monsanto. There is no reason for this guy to use Monsanto - he makes a good living selling organic products. The Monsanto product not only fucks him over legally but now he can't sell his organic product - Monsanto has INFECTED his field and now he has to pay them?! They should be sued for infecting his organic field with their genetically modified garbage. Famers like this guy take the seeds from this years harvest and use them again next year - no need to purchase a Monsanto license every year because he ALREADY HAS THE SEEDS. This is corporate trash at its lowest. It seriously does make me sick - I hope this can be turned around.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
clarification, I don't think "round up ready" modified gene plants could cause a famine. They could cause huge economic loss, especially in the third world where donated grains (bulk donated food) are used as seeds to grow more food,though. It's one of the reasons a lot of third world countries are resisting donated GM crops right now.
What I was referring to is the "terminator" gene modified food crops. THOSE could easily cause global famine, once almost all normal food crops have a terminator gene strain introduced into the "wild" and it starts to spread. It could get out of hand easily. And they haven't stopped working on them, and sometime they will release them, so I say it's a credible threat.
I've posted about this before, but, it's even more pressing now. there is a Documentary about to come out called The Future of Food that covers this case (interviews with Percy, his lawyer, footage of his farm, how he works, etc), others like it, and the entire GMO scene in great detail. After seeing the film, knowing that Monsato has won is quite chilling.
The film has made me change what I eat both from political and heath standpoints. It's very sad that Percy lost his case, not jsut for him, but for what it means Monsanto (and Dupont, etc) can do with the full backing of the law.
The film is showing at Silverdocs in DC (June 16, 2:30pm), the Telluride Film Festival (unknown showtime), and a film festival in Hawaii who's name I can't recall. Future showings will be posted on their website, along with DVDs for purchase.
(Disclosure: My girlfriend is the Associate Producer, Assistant Editor, and Narrator)
My life is dedicated hosting
Correction, they just gave me a big tool to take out the agri-business corps.
I creat a genetically modified corn that can seed with other corns; it produces some trace chemical that it normally doesn't for some kind of industrial application. I then distribute some to some of my friends via the internet, and wait for it to propegate throughout the agribusinesses crops.
1 or 2 years, I find out, OMIGOSH! They've stolen my genes! Lookie, they have to destroy all their crops!
Or, they can sign the lisencing agreement, which is like GPL. You can only install the gene on a plant that has GPL'd genes, and therefore, they have to lisence all theri genes under GPL. You die if you do, and you die if you don't. The lisencing agreement also stipulates that they have pay me 1 penny for each seed produced.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
1) Patent a plant.
2) Spread the plant on unsuspecting farms.
3) Profit!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I think what you meant to say was "They could as long as wind doesn't carry pollen from patented crops into their fields at any time of the day."
This is a serious problem. There are places where if a certain GM gene is found in a crop, all crops of that type in a given radius are burned in an effort to stop the spread of the gene. (The Terminator gene, for example.)
... since day one, several years ago. yes, he replanted seed. No he didn't steal it, not by my definition anyway. No, he didn't spray, negating any alleged "benefit" from the seed.
And my main concern hasn't been addressed with this decision,this is quite true, that will require another court case I guess. and yes, there are several issues now with labeling food, you can slide by now with some pretty impure stuff and still call it organice, at least by federal laws. that's a side issue, but valid.
The main concern with GM crops is *you can't keep it out of your field if you don't want them*. Anyone in your area plants it, YOU can still be "growing it", even if you planted another seed, due to cross pollination. That's the big issue. Well, one of them, but it's big.
And FYI, all my loot I make comes from farming, I am employed on a farm now, started working farms when I was 9 years old. I pay attention to these issues, and feel quite justified in my opinions when I state the reasons. Some things about modern farming I like,for example I like the efforts to produce energy on farms via waste recovery and methane production, etc, like we have discussed here, but some suck rubber donkey dong, and "round up ready" GM seeds falls into the latter category. It's just a throughly bad idea, and will only go to create a more powerful global food monopoly. If you cannot or will not understand why a FOOD monopoly isn't a good idea, there's nothing I can say that would matter, so we'll let that slide, I can't help you then, or really explain it any better. In my opinion, based on the basically easy to understand data of how crops grow and how the food business works, it will NOT help farmers, nor will it make your food cheaper, and it will certainly make your food more poisonous. It WILL make monsanto more money, that's about it. It will COST everyone else, in a variety of ways.
Roundup ready canola is a major weed problem. Now that it is clear Monsanto owns this stuff they can be billed for lost production and cleanup costs. On a related note, are those companies that claim ownership of genes related to breast cancer liable for the damage associated with these genes?
--- That's a deguassing idea!
It was by a group of Canadian organic farmers. They claimed that Monsanto's GM seeds were contaminating their crops, causing them to lose their ability to label that crop as organic. Their reasoning was that if Monsanto has to be paid if their GM seeds spread and unintentionally benefit a farmer, then Monsanto should pay if their GM seeds spread and unintentionally harm a farmer. I dunno what happened in that case though as I never saw a followup in the news.
It's lack of physical activity. The theory is that because the body "notices" it's not having to devote so much energy to staying alive hunting\gathering, etc. The body starts puberty so all those calories can be devoted to reproduction. So this is observed in americans, because they are fat, lazy and don't ever move. On the other hands, girls that play sports don't have this problem.
e ar ly-puberty.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2001-08-07-
Not sure about Canadian law, but in the US a patent certainly can prevent use of the patented product.
From USPTO.GOV:
"The patent grant excludes others from making, using, or selling the invention in the United States."
For all of you screaming that this decision is unfair, read the article carefully. The farmer knew he had acquired the patented seeds and re-used them without a license. And if you don't think plants should be patentable, fine, but then this crop wouldn't exist in the first place. The fact that other farmers pay to use the patented seeds proves that they have a positive economic value.
Yes it is an OUTRAGE !
It is not just the USA, all over the world, neo conservative politicians are tipping us all into a cesspit of copyrights & patents owned by big business.
If ever there was a need for political activism this is it.
Anyone remember Adventure Thru Inner Space, sponsored by Monsanto at Disneyland! Dang, I loved that ride. I was probably about 7 the last time I was able to ride it and I remember being amazed. The queing area was set up to look like people entering the ride were being shrunk by a large machine of some type... There is a guy who is trying to recreate the ride in CG. What he has done so far is pretty damn interesting (if you a Disney fanatic)...
CG Adventure Thru Inner Space
If some frankencorp pollutes my crops' genome with their sloppy tech, they are liable for the damages, starting with their damage to me. How am I supposed to care for these mutated crops, without their genetically-depended sprays? It's marketing from hell. Like if M$ worms infected your Linux box, reinstalling Windows, and demanding you pay for them to download Office to you. Time to get the pitchforks and torches, and climb up to Castle Monsanto.
--
make install -not war
(-1, Dumbshit) Wheat != Canola/rapeseed
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I was under the impression that this guy was definitely not an organic or non-GMO farmer; and that he did in fact use Roundup from time to time, as necessary. I don't doubt that there are many farmers who would find Roundup resistance to be something desirable, as it allows one to use that particular pesticide on a need-based regimen, as opposed to a preventative-based regimen, dumping loads of pesticides on the weeds at a point in time where there is no canola growing. In a twisted sense, that's good for the environment, you can hold off using Roundup until it is just absolutely necessary to kill some weeds and not worry about killing off your crops when you do that. But if there is insufficient evidence, then so much for that theory.
The only good thing that might come out of this is that the extent of the spread of GMO's is going to be known, by Monsanto, for financial and legal reasons. If not Monsanto so they can sue, then it should be the govt. or some other official agency, so that the extent of the spread of GMOs is known. It is still considered a dangerous technology, and no doubt a powerful one. Also, a completely unnecessary one, other than for making money for the big companies (just like most pharmaceuticals are unnecessary, and pharmaceutical company profits are almost entirely enabled via patents). GMO companies know that patents allow them to recoup their R&D, just like pharmaceutical companies.
In any case, there should be a database of some kind, or something that functions like a database, a registry, if you will, of farmers who are growing GMOs, so that this is known. If Monsanto is willing to do it, as they obviously are, for financial and legal reasons, at least that's somebody doing it.
For corn, for instance, I understand that the testing kits for GMOs are relatively inexpensive (approx $10-20 US) - and non-GMO products, especially organic products, will get you, as a farmer, a premium at market. If you do the organic farming right, also, you will have increased yields per acre and a better profit margin. Chemicals are expensive.
One solution is to grow organic, non-GMO crops, test them extensively, and then sue your neighbors if their crops contaminate yours. It's one way to deal with the issue. Turn the tables. If you contaminate my organic, non-GMO crops with your GMOs, then I sue your butt. That might provide some sort of incentive there.
You have to have faith, really - it's a crazy world out there. But the thing that I always thought was interesting about this case was that some of the lower courts felt, and re-affirmed twice that the farmer knew that he was saving seeds that had displayed significant Roundup resistance. Again, this frees up the pesticide schedules, and saves you from having to do preventative pesticide applications. Of course, crop rotation and other methods are far more effective, but this area of Canada has hundreds of acres of canola monocultures going on. A lot of these farmers apparently grow canola, and only canola, and have done so for generations. In any case, this is a bad idea, it's bad for the soil - you need to grow lots of different crops, a variety of crops, for crop rotation and other non-chemical methods of pest control to work.
Monoculture farmers put themselves at risk to begin with by engaging in the enviornentally destructive practice of monoculture. Thjs weakens the environment and allows companies like Monsanto to capitalize on the problems inherent in sustaining a monoculture of a certain type of crop.
Interesting terrorist tactic as well. Buy some GMO seeds not fit for humans (like the feed-corn that was in those taco shells) and scatter it across a country's food supply. The economic damage could equal mad-cow.
and it just might work...
The equivalent analogy to what you're proposing is this (and from my understanding of how Roundup works, it's a really good parallel): Put one hundred human beings in a room where 80% of the atmosphere is carbon monoxide, and have them sit there for an hour. By the time the hour is up, most of them will be dead. But some of them may survive. You have those survivors mate, and whatever trait allowed them to escape carbon monoxide poisoning will be passed on to their offspring. Voila! You have just bred people who can breathe carbon monoxide.
How likely does it sound to you?
Breakfast served all day!
As far as I know, this is not generally a problem to other farmers, and no farmers I know seem to think it's a problem. They may have a problem with Monsanto or their license agreement in general, but they're not worried about being taken to court like Schmeiser.
Aside from the fact that your link is about US law, and the article is about a patent infringement case in Canada(ie, assuming that the laws are substantially similar)
Apparently the patent laws of Canada and the United States are sufficiently harmonised at least with respect to infringement solely by use of the invention. Canadian patent law uses the construction "make, construct, use or sell" (emphasis added).
Umm they pulled the terminator gene 5 years ago. You've been lobbying against GM foods? Yet you don't even know the terminator gene program has been abandoned? If your going to protest something at least be informed about the subject, it helps you cause a lot better than making ignorant statements.
Monsanto pulls terminator gene
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
How the hell are you supposed to know your crop is infected? Do the altered ones turn neon blue for easy ID or something?
...RIAA in talks to acquire Black Flag Insect Control Systems.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
1. Create genetically engineered seed.
2. Spread over someone's property.
3. Sue.
4>???
Profit!
Monsanto will soon be selling giant weather domes to protect your farms. Those who don't pay up for a dome will lose their crops to Monsanto's evil weather controlling apparatus and horrible army of gen-modded locusts.
Be Afraid! BE VERY AFRAID!!!
Sounds like we need another tractorcade to knock some sense into the politicians. Anyone remember the tractorcade in Washington in the 1970s? Tractors on the Beltway and stuff. It was pretty wild. That'd get their attention.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Woah, you have to select correctly. In your Carbon Monoxide example, you need to make sure that your sample is all of similar health to start with (if 90% of your sample has asthma you are selecting against that, and not for CO resistance). Now you place them in the room with elevated CO levels, and keep increasing it slowly until a large portion is dead. Breed the rest. Repeat with their offspring over many generations.
With plants you have the advantage that they reproduce every year, unlike humans that need 12 years or more. (and if you start that young you may end up selecting in latter generations for those who can safely breed younger, as much as CO levels) Not to mention there are a lot less ethical problems with poisoning plants, and forcing them to mate.
One of the reasons we are getting drug resistance bacteria is that people do not take the full course of their drugs once they are "cured". A little big escapes, and is allowed to infect others, and it is that few that has some resistance. Toss in a little mutation along the way and gradually (60 years) you get drug resistance.
In plant terms that means you can't spray the recommended dossages of roundup, you need a smaller dose, something you would have to find experimentally. Eventually you get something that survives, now you keep working with that. All much easier in theory than in practice, but if you have 60 years and really want roundup resistant dandelions you can do it.
Fine.
This doesn't, of course, make Monsanto any less an out-of-control monstrosity.
Read about Roundup resistant Soy Beans and how they are destroying Argentina's eco-system.
Day of the Freekin' Trifids.
Patenting life is retarded; I don't care how much work and research you put into it. A dangerous, irresponsible idea doesn't entitle you to make money; it entitles you to prison time. Monsanto certainly needs to be shut down, but nonetheless, the Canadian case is not black and white. It's black and stupid.
-FL
After all, it worked in Jurassic Park.
dinner: it's what's for beer
I've heard a few other theories about precocious (I hope I spelled that right, but I guess this is /., where few know the difference between 'loose' and 'lose'.) puberty, one rumor, one fairly solid.
The wild rumor is that the plasticizers used in ordinary recycle#2 food packaging, like milk jugs, has molecular features that somehow resemble estrogen, and are able to bind to some of the same receptors in the body. So it's somewhat like oral dosages of estrogen for all of us.
The fairly solid one is that fat isn't just inert mass - it's more like an organ, secreting hormones - such as estrogen. The place I read this predicted earlier puberty in heavier girls. More recently, I read something about other hormonal secretions from fat that may act to shorten lifetime in ways other than just encouraging a sedentary lifestyle.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Ignoring the obvious genetic issues,
Assuming he isn't lying,
Didn't we just set a disturbing precident?
Your new Uber-plant infects my crops, killing off my specially talored glow-in-the-dark corn. Now i owe you money. YOUR plant killed MY plant.
Is this right?
Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We get to take it in the ass again because of which way the hot air is blowing. Of course, we're good for it - we've gotten lots of practice from our politicians.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I'll design a new kind of computer virus that infects Windows.
Then I'll patent it.
Then I'll license the technology to a single virus filter vendor.
Sooner or later a virus will appear that violates the patent.
When that happens I'll sue everyone whose computer gets infected with it, sue all of the virus filter vendors who didn't license the patent, and sue Microsoft for contributory infringement.
Sony has, for real sued itself over the DMCA. Or at least has found different divisions on both sides of the same lawsuit. Still, fact is stranger than fiction!
aQazaQa
There are tons of weedkillers that are effective on stuff like this. Roundup was invented in the 80s. Were weeds unkillable in 1979?
Jeez, I swear this is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard.
Schmeiser should be suing Monsanto for tresspass.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The write-up is inflammatoy and flat-out wrong. Whether you are for or against genetically engineered/modifed foods, please get the facts right and don't mislead people about a very important legal decision.
Woz
The Court ruled that yes, Schmeiser infringed the patent, but no, Monsanto couldn't get their account of profits because there were no profits attributable to the infringement. This is a win for Schmeiser, and is exactly what I would have expected. Monsanto got a symbolic victory only.
On the question of infringement, the Court was almost evenly divided, which fairly well reflects the nature of the legal issues involved.
As for the screwed-up state of the law, this is a matter for the Canadian Parliament.
The did sue Monsanto for contaminating the seeds. The cases were either separately filed or had been split by the Court because one was a federal issue and the other a provincial issue, so the same court couldn't hear both. The contamination case then had to be suspended because the Court wouldn't be able to figure out what the damages were without knowing the outcome of the federal case.
Now that the federal case has reached its ultimate conclusion, the provincial case dealing with the contamination starts up again. This is not the last we have heard of the legal wrangles between Schmeiser and Monsanto.
So if a neighbor creates a new type of shotgun pellet and starts test firing it, if pellets are found in my backyard, I have to pay him for patent infringement ?!?!?!?!
Ok, let's clarify this some. If his plants were pollenated by another field, thus being contaminated, how is it his fault that wind and insects go from one plant to another? On the other hand, if bought seeds that weren't supposed to be the GM ones, but the dealer screwed up, again, hows that his fault? Ok, let's say he knew they were GM seeds, and he planted them, either he bought them, was given them, or stole them. Short of them being stolen, how the heck does this make him at fault?
Oh, as to folks talking about the terminator seeds, that's not a new concept. They've been selling sterile seeds to farmers for several crops long before genetic mods were done. They hybridize two strains that create a type of plant mule. It makes seeds, but they won't sprout. That way they can break the 10,000 year old tradition of farmers saving part of their crop for replanting every year..... Seems to me there should be a law against that.
Do that, starting at lower concentrations of course, and rince repeat a couple of million years long, upping the concentration, and it does work that way.
How impressive: you've just discovered the way evolution works, my friend!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Wikileaks, no DNS
The Supreme Court of Canada says that you're liable if a plant with a patented gene infects your property.
It seems to me, after this decision, that the best way to answer this is by charging storage fees. If I drop my car off at Public Storage for a year without paying, they can demand the storage costs or put the car up for auction. If Monsanto wants to use your fields to store thier seed, I think the $50,000 per day storage fee should apply...
I'd like to point out that the court decision in question does _not_ in any way, make farmers guilty if seeds that blow onto their land. The guy in the article is not being punished for accidental contamination. The court _specifically_ rejected that claim, having found that the guy had 1000 acres, almost $10,000 worth of Monsanto seeds, and couldn't explain how they got there. The ruling was then made on the basis of the seeds having been stolen or obtained without Monsanto's permission.
Also, because he didn't use Round-up, (and may not have known it was Monsanto seed), it was ruled that he didn't directly benefit from Monsanto's patent, and so he was not required to pay his profits (on the order of $14,000) as damages, merely stop using the seed and turn over any remaining crops.
The court in absolutely no way ruled that Monsanto could seize farmer's crops on the basis of contamination. It did, however, mention that Monsanto may be exposed to liability if contimination were to occur in organic farms, making the crops uneligable to be sold with the organic label.
Posted as AC since such a bleedingly obvious re-statement of the article shouldn't whore for kharma...
One of those evil mega-companies that not enough people know enough about.
For ruining non-genetically modified crops. If their seeds breed with non-genetically modified crops and create hybrids, farmers could sue them for all their worth. That's why I think they discontinued selling the round-up wheat. While I don't like the Supreme Court's decision, I think they ruled correctly. imho this isn't a matter of patent law, it's a matter for Parliament.
One of the most common mutations in nature is an omission, so in "defective" offspring that lack the terminator gene, the other genes would be carried onward into the new population.
So fucking what should the farmer have done?
He has tons of seed. One grain in a thousand contains the gene, the other 999 do not.
Sit down with his wife and separate the grains by looking sharply at each one?
Sell the lot and lose his reputation as a non-GM farmer?
Oh, I get it. HE SHOULD HAVE THROWN THE LOT AWAY, OF COURSE, because anything else might have been patent infringement. AND THEN HE SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT GM SEED OFF THE COMPANY!
This is turning into a win-win-win-win-win situation for Monsanto.
-FL
I'm sorry, but that's just not right. People need oxygen to breathe -- not carbon monoxide. The way carbon monoxide poisoning works is that CO forms carboxyhemoglobin in the blood, which inhibits absorbtion of oxygen. You might as well expose a bunch of people to inhalation of low doses of water and expect them to evolve gills. It just doesn't work that way. Or, it might -- the problem is that, as you say, you'd need a couple million years' worth of evolution, and in this experiment all the test subjects would be dead in hours.
This is why I used the carbon monoxide analogy -- RoundUp works in a similar way on plants, inhibiting their ability to form the enzyme EPSP synthase, which they need to grow. Since it's possible to grow a "RoundUp Ready" plant that will resist the effects of the chemical, you might theorize that such a trait could evolve naturally. My point, however, is that it hasn't happened yet, and RoundUp is so toxic to plants that it's extremely unlikely to happen. The trait that makes plants resistant to RoundUp was not arrived at through the normal evolutionary process. Scientist derived the "RoundUp Ready Gene" from material found in a cauliflower mosaic virus, a petunia, and a bacterium. For that type of modification to occur as a fluke in nature, though not impossible, is pretty darn unlikely.
Breakfast served all day!
...while there is (a lot) of frivolous defense by people convicted of really bad things trying to stay alive by gaming the legal system, apparently it hasn't prevented significant numbers (at least 75, probably > 100, or at least 2% of death penalty cases) of innocent people from being convicted.
The evidence that more than a few of the people convicted of death penalty crimes were innocent (including half? of IL's death row) indicates that the system is flawed. The existence of these flaws and the fact that we know they exist requires us to do something about them, both for the sake of the people wrongly convicted and the people subject to crimes by an unknown person. Any privilege will be abused, but that abuse does not seem reason enough to negate innocence as a cause for appeal - by doing so, one negates much of why the justice system exists in the first place (to appropriately punish the guilty and to protect the innocent). Even if you cut the number of prisoners gaming the system, you have removed much of what is just and useful from the justice system and thus have won what can be described as a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Innocence itself is not evaluable in the absence of evidence - I can claim "I didn't do X" in the absence of evidence that I didn't do X, and the courts will come to the same conclusion they did before. I made the assumption that "actual innocence" as a claim for appeal is backed by evidence that supports that claim, because without the evidence, one is blowing smoke. In that sense, Justice Scalia is correct - a claim of innocence with no evidence to support it is not a sufficient cause for appeal.
In most cases where actual innocence is used as a basis for appeal, there is (some) evidence to support the assertion. In some fraction of those cases, the prisoner is gaming the system - however we have other means to look at the balance of evidence in cases than to ignore such claims. For civil cases, we have dismissal with prejudice and malicious prosecution for bad cases (and maybe also others - IANAL). It should be possible for either other judges or intermediaries to look at a claim for appeal and determine if it has sufficient merit to proceed. That might help, or there might be other ways to do it that would avoid overwhelming the system. In other cases, the evidence is better, and in those cases, a claim of actual innocence isn't required to make the case worth looking at - it just makes the claim more urgent. If most cases were simply claims of innocence without support, then removing actual innocence as a cause for appeal would help unburden the judicial system and would make sense, but I don't know if such claims make up a significant fraction of cases.
Actual innocence as an unsubstantiated claim shouldn't be a basis for appeal - my assumption reading the quote was the Scalia was referring to cases where such evidence exists (or else the cases in which he made the remark would not have proceeded to get to the SC). The only alternative (to the presence of evidence in an actual innocence claim) I can see is if the defense believes that the evidence is consistent with the innocence of their client, but that doesn't suffice to make a claim of actual innocence (the evidence only says the person hasn't been proven to have done the crime, not that he didn't do it). In the case, though, the defense is SOL without other evidence.
I agree with your point - I made some assumptions in coming to the defense of "actual innocence" claims that may have been different than what Justice Scalia meant. I just figured that most such claims include other evidence to support the claims, and with such evidence, the claims should be heard by someone.