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PubPat Kills Four Key Monsanto Patents
IP Ergo Sum writes "PubPat's request for reexamination resulted in the rejection of four key Monsanto patents. According to PubPat, those particular patents were being used to 'harass, intimidate, sue — and in many cases bankrupt — American farmers.'"
You mean there was a victory for the little guy? Surely you jest....
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
VICTORY IS (nutra)SWEET.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
It's about time - but attacking the patents one by one is not a real long term solution, changes to legislation is the only thing that can fix the problem of frivolous patents.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Monopolies are at best bad for the market, and at worst bad for Humanity. In this case, Monsanto's monopolizing has caused a lot of grief for many traditional farmers who save the previous year's crop seeds. This kind of thing really makes me sick.
and propagate. http://science.howstuffworks.com/cloning1.htm
Please!
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
I read up on this company monsantore and it sounds like they're denying scientific fact that shows that the products they create are harmful for animal and human consumption. I'm just checking, was I inferring correct or am I misreading? I'm not a "save the world" kind of guy but isn't the whole point of getting something natural to, well, at least try to create things More natural as opposed to less?
Rejections can be overcome by amending the claims. Also, rejections can be appealed multiple levels, delaying this for several more years.
Patenting / copyright / other methods to articifially control something being copied are STUPID when applied to an entity who's sole purpose is to make copies of itself.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I, for one, welcome our emasculated overlords.
5164316: DNA construct for enhancing the efficiency of transcription
5196525: DNA construct for enhancing the efficiency of transcription
5322938: DNA construct for enhancing the efficiency of transcription
5352605: Chimeric genes for transforming plant cells using viral promoters
Yes, the first three have the same title. I haven't read any of them yet. You can find the full text on the USPTO web site. Search by patent number here.
I couldn't access the article. But here's an excerpt from the executive
summary from centerforfoodsafety.org:
Startling though these numbers are, they do not begin to tell the whole
story. Many farmers have to pay additional court and attorney fees and are
sometimes even forced to pay the costs Monsanto incurs while investigating
them. Final monetary awards are not available for a majority of the 90 lawsuits
CFS researched due to the confidential nature of many of the settlements.
No farmer is safe from the long reach of Monsanto. Farmers have
been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone
else's genetically engineered crop; when genetically engineered seed from a
previous year's crop has sprouted, or "volunteered," in fields planted with
non-genetically engineered varieties the following year; and when they
never signed Monsanto's technology agreement but still planted the patented
crop seed. In all of these cases, because of the way patent law has been
applied, farmers are technically liable. It does not appear to matter if the use
was unwitting or a contract was never signed.
70% of the Indian population is dependant on agriculture for their livelihood - it was closer to 80% a few decades ago. Monsanto has tied up with Indian companies, and it's business practices have driven several hundreds of farmers to debts and suicide. BT (Biologically Treated) cotton from Mahyco (if I remember right) has caused havoc in farmers' lives in several Indian states.
Monsanto specialises in technologies that make farmers dependant on these firms every year for seeds and patented techniques. Not only should such patents be outlawed; it should be made a crime to work against nature and create genetic modifications that prevent seeds from germinating.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Sorry. Missed a paragraph when pasting. Here's the relevant text:
The largest recorded judgment made thus far in favor of Monsanto as
a result of a farmer lawsuit is $3,052,800.00. Total recorded judgments
granted to Monsanto for lawsuits amount to $15,253,602.82. Farmers have
paid a mean of $412,259.54 for cases with recorded judgments.
Startling though these numbers are, they do not begin to tell the whole
story. Many farmers have to pay additional court and attorney fees and are
sometimes even forced to pay the costs Monsanto incurs while investigating
them. Final monetary awards are not available for a majority of the 90 lawsuits
CFS researched due to the confidential nature of many of the settlements.
No farmer is safe from the long reach of Monsanto. Farmers have
been sued after their field was contaminated by pollen or seed from someone
else's genetically engineered crop; when genetically engineered seed from a
previous year's crop has sprouted, or "volunteered," in fields planted with
non-genetically engineered varieties the following year; and when they
never signed Monsanto's technology agreement but still planted the patented
crop seed. In all of these cases, because of the way patent law has been
applied, farmers are technically liable. It does not appear to matter if the use
was unwitting or a contract was never signed.
On their webpage they have a link to a letter from the CEO about the Monsanto Pledge:
e /letter_grant.asp
http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/layout/our_pledg
An interesting quote from the letter:
"Obviously, we still have challenges. They include how to secure our intellectual property in parts of the world where the legal protection is not yet mature."
I've read reports of farmers being sued by Monsanto because their crops get contaminated by GM strains via wind, animals, or farm equipment. Could the farmers sue Monsanto for polluting their crops' gene pool?
My thoughts upon reading the heading for this story (no kidding):
1. How terrible! Those poor patients...
2. Where is Monsanto hospital?
3. What made them 'key' patients, exactly? Does that express favouritism, and if so, does it violate the triage system that is so important in modern medical practice?
4. Who is Pub Pat (and what kind of a name is that, anyway), and why would he or she do such a thing?
Naturally upon reading slightly lower, I realized how far off I was. Still, for a while, the story looked promising.
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
At least the ones who had to pay for these patents?
A million dollars and bankruptcy. I'd rather use that money to pay someone to perform some magical tricks to make certain individuals vanish then to pay the money out to some GM crop mafia.
From http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MonsantovsFarmers.php >One hundred percent purity is no longer achievable, and even if non-contaminated seed could be purchased, some contamination can take place in the field either by transfer of seed by wind, animals or via farm equipment.
So If I was a farmer and saw some strange crop growing in my field could I charge Monsanto with trespassing or some kind of environmental pollution/contamination since their property is illegally growing on my land?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Purpose? Bacteria don't have a purpose they just do what they do. Besides, suppose a company finally succeded in creating a 3d printer capable of printing itself. Would that really make it suddenly unworthy of patent protection.
This is all irrelevant to the question that matters: Is the harm caused by giving one company a monopoly worth the benefits gained from incentivizing research. Now likely this calculation comes out against patents on naturally occurring genes since it is likely to encourage blanket patenting without real research but I don't see any different between patenting instructions for the biological machines in our cells and for the silicon machines in our computers.
So long as we can keep people form patenting obvious DNA sequences it seems like a reasonable policy to me. I just hope they don't take the analogy with software too far and start copyrighting DNA sequences. Then we would have the same mess as we do in the computer field where a fundamentally functional item gets protection for 75+ years without even being forced to reveal the internal workings. Maybe we will get lucky and the net effect will be to take software from copyright protection and put it under patent protection (this is not the same as software patents).
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
inside 10 seconds I thought : hmm, it's cheaper to spin off a new company and let them patent 1-10 patents.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Good stuff at Parent's post, shame I just used up mine ....
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
The articles concentrate on the way Monsanto (ab)used the patents.
Is there any mention why they were rejected?
Are they trivial?
Was there prior art?
Or were rejected because they were abused? (Is that possible?)
http://google.com/search?q=cache:vfmbsNn07hoJ:www. pubpat.org/monsantovfarmers.htm
http://bereagardens.blogspot.com/
Unfortunately the Pub Pat website is still suffering from connection problems so I couldn't read the full article. However, I am familiar with Monsantos actions. In a way Monsanto could be seen as the Microsoft of biotechnology: monopolizing, buying out smaller companies, shooting people down with patent claims, etc. The thing is that when companies become bigger (or gigantic as is the case with Monsanto) they start hiring additional lawyers. That's where it all goes wrong, the evilness of a company is positively correlated wit the amount of lawyers it has on its payroll.
Scientists do what scientists do: research stuff and build stuff while making a living on the side. Lawyers do what lawyers do: try to find every possible way to use laws and legislation to keep a company safe and have it generate money while making a living on the side.
The problem is that with a growing amount of lawyers a technology company starts gravitating away from its initial ideals and slowly changes into a Jabba the Hut like all consuming, greedy creature.
Actually, there are non-economic, patent related reasons why a plant biotech company would want to restrict seed access: containment. Although sufficiently tested GM seeds still hold a potential danger when used incorrectly. When a farmer is able to retain seeds of a GM crop, the crop is effectively out of control of the developing institute. The farmer could distribute the seeds and perhaps use them in an inappropriate manner. I don't want to point fingers here, but I'm pretty certain your average farmer does not have the expertise to assess the safety of working with a certain GM crop. This could lead to the uncontrolled spreading of GM crops into the wild without anyone knowing where, what and how many. This is basicaly a two front war: ecologists on the one side who want to control spreading of potentially hazardous GM crops in to the wild. And on the other side people who are against the fact that farmers of GM crops are tied to the manufacturers of said crops. But hey, biotech will never be the good guy (apart from medical biotech that is)
It is evident, that this "precaution principle" is severely misused by Monsanto and has to be controlled in some way. What originated as a biologically sound plan has become lawyer ammo. A sad day for science
In Soviet Russia elephant rides you!
I do not understand why there is such opposition to biological patents. It is not as though Monsanto did not invest considerable time and effort to develop seed strains resistant to disease and various weather conditions. If Monsanto contends farmers are selling the seed Monsanto developed without doing the years of research and breeding required for the result, what are the farmers contributing to the development of these strains? Why should I as a stock holder not get the benefits of their research?
Everything about genetically modifying plants so they cannot reproduce, patenting the genes used to do this, then suing farmers that accidentally have those plants growing in their fields is simply monstrous.
There is no surer sign that humanity's future is grim than corporations owning the rights to plants that humans grow for subsistence.
They own the water, they own the mineral wealth, they own the forests, they own the food, they own everything there is to own.
Truly, truly monstrous. That's the only word I can think to use to describe the situation.
If GM crops nudge out the conventional ones, eventually we'll be in a position where a company can starve millions of people to death at will. Legally. And since capitalism essentially equates morality with legality and profitability, who will really argue with them? People really, really need to watch The Corporation. I'm all about making a buck, but we really, really need re re-evaluate what we let corporations get away with. Do even the most materialistic among us really want a private corporation owning not only the food, but the capacity of the plants to reproduce?
For an interesting look at the Monsanto history, GM foods, gene patenting, risks and impact across North America, I recommend you watch the documentary "The Future of Food" (torrent).
... and don't get me started on the "terminator gene".
Description:
THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.
From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.
Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.
IMDB link. [imdb.com]
-Sin Maíz no hay País-
http://www.biotech-info.net/basmati_patent.html
Grown in India for hundreds of years, now the rights to grow it in the USA are owned by a US company. You grow it in USA, you have to pay the patent owning company. How can such behaviour be permitted? Your system is really broken.
I hate to be a jerk, but I have to question why the farmers just don't stick to their traditional crops (versus the GM versions) if Monsanto is so horrible. Not one is forcing them to buy GM seeds (they could have kept saving and resuing their old seeds forever, without having to buy anything from Monsanto). So either buying Monsanto seeds isn't a losing deal (i.e. the farmers still make more money than they would have otherwise) or the farmers have poor judgement. Am I missing something?
It seems to me that a lot of them are pretty much suckered into it. They are made to think that this is the latest thing in modern agriculture and that it will benefit them with higher crop yields and thus higher profit margins. To people who are often already having trouble turning a profit this is hard to refuse. Not that is easy to get your hands on unmodified seed stock any more. To add insult to injury even if you inadvertently planted GM seeds you are also fucked. To quote TFA:
American farmers are hard pushed to find high quality, conventional varieties of corn, soy and cottonseed. Anecdotal evidence supports this. Troy Roush, an Indiana soybean farmer says, "You can't even purchase them in this market. They are not available." Similar reports come from the corn and cotton farmers who say, "There are not too many seeds available that are not genetically altered in some way.".....
.....A further example is seed dealers who sell seeds in plain brown bags so farmers sow them unknowingly. This happened to Farmer Thomason who was harassed into court by Monsanto and sued for over a million dollars. He had no choice but to file for bankruptcy despite never intending to plant Bt cotton.
.....Farmers are under pressure to confirm their identity as modern agriculturalists, particularly in developing countries. But replacing the traditional strategy of saving and replanting seeds from diverse varieties by a patented seed with all its restrictions threatens food security at household and global levels......
Here's another choice quote:
Researchers at the University of Manitoba, Canada tested 33 samples of certified canola (oilseed rape) seed stock and 32 were contaminated with GM. The Union of Concerned Scientists tested traditional US seed stocks of corn, soy and canola and found 50% corn, 50% soy and 83% canola contaminated by GM.
.....Outcomes of lawsuits brought by Monsanto against farmers are mostly kept under wraps. If farmers are tempted to breach confidentiality they can face fines greater than the settlements. But where judgments have been publicly recorded, sizeable payments benefit not only Monsanto, but also partner companies.
One hundred percent purity is no longer achievable, and even if non-contaminated seed could be purchased, some contamination can take place in the field either by transfer of seed by wind, animals or via farm equipment.
Monsanto dominates the sale of seed stocks yet puts the onus of finding markets for crops on the farmer. Within their contract is the "Technology Use Guide" which gives directions on how to find grain handlers willing to accept crops not approved for use in the EU. While Monsanto acknowledges that pollen flow and seed movement are sufficient to contaminate neighbouring non-GM fields their implicit rule is that "the growers of the non-GM crops must assume responsibility and receive the benefit for ensuring that their crops meet specifications for purity.".....
Combined financial penalties have forced many farmers into bankruptcy and off their land. Agriculture is suffering losses all around because of the disappearance of foreign markets. The US Farm Bureau estimates that farmers lose over $300 million a year because European markets refuse GM corn. The US State Department says that as much as $4 billion could be lost in agricultural exports due to EU labelling and traceability requirements. Organic and conventional farmers
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I do not understand why there is such opposition to biological patents. Monsanto has spent the time and research to develop seed strains for disease and weather resistant crops. I feel they have a right to protect that investment. I see a lot of people shaking their fists complaining that Monsanto is bulling farmers. I live in a rural area. There are farmers here. I haven't seen that. Indeed, they likely benefit from the seed Monsanto sells. As a stock holder why should I not benefit from the advances they make?
Lots of people own it. It is disheartening to see that while we are willing to put our money where our mouth is, others just want to see Monsanto punished for their inovations.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
If we would have wide spread compilers, debuggers and IDEs for genetic code this would be just another software patent discussion, and Monsanto just another patent troll.
imagine building our own free open source genetic operating system... and then the posibilities....
I'm just off to patent my idea for an mp3 player that encodes the music in the DNA of mold spores.
Ripe spores will be blown out through a vent, and possibly infect another compatible players.
What will the mafiaa do then.
Because they use them irresponsibly, if they made their GM crops sterile, that's fine. They don't though, so their patented GM genes end up in the crops of people who chose not to use their seeds. Since the genes are their property, they feel that they are entitled to money for them, and end up suing the farmers who used their products either unknowingly, or even unwillingly.
Being able to own a product that autoreproduces by design, uncontrollable by the patent owner, is bad. Sort of the viral infection that people always associate with GPL software, except in this case, it's really hard to not chose to use their products.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Why do I feel the need to feed the trolls?
Because there's a chance that you're making a sincere argument? Yeah, probably...
If Monsanto's GM patented genes were "containable" then I would say there's good argument for your side of this. But the problem lies and always has lied in it being uncontainable. Accidents of all sorts have happened and worse. One of Monsanto's tests is to kill a section of a farmer's field. If it doesn't die, then it contains their GM patented genes. (If the witch floats...) There is pollination as a problem... the GM patented gene plants give even if they don't receive. And seeds ALSO have a way of blowing in the wind in the cases where the seed IS the product like wheat.
But ultimately, there are far too many innocent people being harmed by this one corporation. This one corporation, by itself, has managed to harm humanity in ways that are simply unprecedented. If you truly believe that the value of money is of higher importance than that of the future of humanity, you need to rethink your position on this since the odds are good that you are also human.
Just as patents on medicines are used to deprive people unable to pay for it from life, these patents on food are used to deprive people unable to defend themselves growing their own crops.
There's an entire planet out here that doesn't care about "the value of a stock" and the systems of nature do no ask permission from lawyers.
I understand what you are saying but I doubt this is the issue. Monstanto should have little interest in where their pollen goes. Their interest is in protecting their proprietarily work. I don't think their pollen would demonstrably damage crops especially if the crops are grown for food as most crops are.
If they are competitors, growing crops for seed is the issue. I doubt Monsanto pursues farmers who live adjacent to their test fields. This might not be the case for their competitors in adjacent fields, however. I am not aware of the specifics in this case though.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
In the wikipedia article you cited, the sequence of events in Schmeiser case is as follows:
1. Schmeiser field was contaminated by Roundup Ready gene.
2. Schmeiser discovered this and decided to harvest, save seeds and plant them next year.
3. He has not used Roundup at all, so his decision in 2 was not because he wanted a free benefit, but just because he did not want to burn contaminated crop.
4. Appelate courts split 5:4. 5 for "use" means "any use", 4 for "use" means "for profit use".
Should he have burnt his contaminated harvest? Why? He was not under contract with Monsanto.
The people who are using the regular crops are traditionalist or people who see a use/market for the crops.
Genetically engineered crops are usually selected purely for yield and resistance to disease and herbicides.
Those "traditionalists" you decry usually select for taste also, often over generations. I've noticed that people arguing for genetically engineered crops usually ignore how they taste.
What good is the best yielding and resistant crop if it tastes like cardboard?
It always bothers me when I see a patriotic rallying cry that points out the pain to "Americans". Are you saying it wouldn't be so bad/unethical if the companies were harming non-Americans?
Is take my little plane thats a crop duster, and fill it with fuel, and dump it all over their Mosanto crops, then fly over again, and fire
a few flares at em.
Of course I would do this after having sold my farm, converted the cash to gold, that is hidden in a swiss bank vault, that im due
to go fly to the next day, and retire in much nicer place.
Btw, the patriot act is just that, a fake act!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
But that's exactly what they're suing over. One farmer may buy the GM'ed seeds, and the farmer directly across the road won't. Next year, the GM'ed crops show up in the other farmers field (through pollination, wind carrying seeds, etc), and they get sued for violating their patent.
If this was a simple case of people stealing seeds and planting them in their fields, or GM'ing them themselves, that would be different. But that's not the case.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
These "little" details are very informative and important to point out.
The 'Future of Food' is a must see.
For all of those here trying to figure out how farmers got wrapped up in this Monsanto patent mess, how many seeds are now extinct and how they bioengineered and somehow, 'unknowingly' cross pollinated with the farmers field then sued them, this film will explain it all. Most disturbing is the large number of names of top employees that used to work for Monsanto (whose seed is banned in many countries) are now employed by our own federal government EPA offices. Very disturbing.
I stand by my comment above, sure it might be hyperbole but it could easily be true. Bin Laden is a very rich man. If I was him I'd funnel money into lawyers who are affiliated with al qaeda to file patents on strains of grain which will be very easily spread and very easily identified (maybe even make it better in an evolutionary sense). Have your drones spread it around in the dead of night, aim to contaminate hundreds of thousands of acres... then sue. With the aim of making loads of money and preventing growing this crop again. After a strain is out there how could you stop it circling round? Especially if it was evolutionarily better.
Then they have even more money to murder innocent people, have ruined the economy, and potentially caused millions of people to starve. All legally.
I don't see any reasons why this plan wouldn't work unless they can make it a more general ruling against suing people based on something that you've forced upon them. Call it FUD, but if the system allows it to work then it needs to be stopped.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I am not against patents on an innovate breed of crop manufactured through genetic engineering per se. But the way Monsanto is pursuing farmers right now would be like if the RIAA demanded you pay for a copy of a CD whenever someone listening to a song simply drove by you in his car with his windows open. If Monsanto wants the benefit of patent-backed monopoly pricing on their product, then the onus should be on them to insure that people wishing to opt out of that monopoly have a clear means to do so.
I do not understand why there is such opposition to biological patents In general, it is not because of the existence of the patents themselves, but because of the way the patents and the technology itself are used to gain control of the food industry. Examples are scattered throughout this discussion and easy to find with Google, so I won't repeat them here, but do some research -- you hint that you might be a Monsanto stock holder; if you are, you should make an effort to research and find out why people are upset with them. BTW, in this case, the article states that prior art was found. This is a good reason for *any* patent to be rejected, not just biotech. So these particular patents are opposable on those grounds alone.
Isn't it more accurate to say patents on medicine provide the medicine to those who can pay?
In fact, after 15 years (not all that long) the patent goes away and a whole lot of people can afford it.
Why do people have an inherent right to treatment that didn't even exist 20 years prior?
Patents on medicine re only problematic when preventing fighting an epidemic (futunatly the bootleggers take care of that).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Having looked through some of the responses I can see that this debate has become one about GM as much as one about abuse of frivolous patents.
GM first - the main problem I see with GM crops is not so much that "it is unnatural" and therefore harmful. Philosophically speaking, nothing we do is unnatural - it all follows the laws of nature, even if it isn't always good for us. That's an aside, though - the real problem is more one of genetic pollution. Never mind they say that it doesn't happen "very often", whatever that means; the basic idea with the gene modifications we see from the likes of Monsanto is to create a plant that has some sort of advantage, in a very narrow sense, over unmodified plants - once the modified gene escapes into the wild, which it will unless the modified plants are unable to reproduce sexually (and what is the point of corn that doesn't produce seeds?) - once the genes escape, we don't know what will happen. Perhaps the genes that were a moderate afvantage for a crop plant turns out to be a huge advantage for a wild species, and suddenly we have a big problem on our hands; we simply don't know, and we have no way of reliably assessing the risk. This however, is the least of the problems.
The real problem, as Monsanto shows us, is that these patents it will be used as a weapon by multinational corporations; it gives them power far beyond what is reasonable, and on a very dubious foundation. The likely truth is that no matter which genes any company "invents", they already exist somewhere in nature; in light of this I think the law should be changed, at least for genes - either it should rest on the company to prove that their invention is a real invention, or it should simply be impossible to patent genes.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/
Harvest of Fear is a documentary on GMOs as well, produced by PBS. If anyone watches Future of Food, they should watch Harvest of Fear. This is primarily because I thought Future of Food (as another reply to this parent pointed out) seems to have been designed to scare the viewer shitless. Harvest of Fear, on the other hand, provides arguments and counter arguments for nearly every topic brought up, without the dramatics and theatrics featured in the Future of Food. You might find yourself agreeing with one viewpoint, and another take on that viewpoint will be brought up, and it gets you thinking.
In any case, it's good to watch the 2 and compare/contrast the views.
Well I heard that it IS in fact Law in America for A Public Corporation to place the making of profits, and thus paying of dividends to it's shareholders, at the top of it's Corporate agenda. It would explain some of the truly ruthless and even pathological actions that many of these entities take to achieve profits...
is not on creating better food. Is on creating food that is more profitable. Not profitable to the farmer, but to the producer of the seeds. It's all about controlling the market and ensuring their monopoly, like we all come to know from MS. So they will only worry about not creating "frankenfood" if they have to, and to the extent that it hurts their profits. And pardon me, but this BS that "natural food is not enough to feed the world" is just that, BS. Americans have been well fed for decades without genetic engineering.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Monstanto should have little interest in where their pollen goes.
Yeah and fucking with YOUR same logic, when I go hunting, I should have little interest where my bullets go and if I decide to hunt at Monsanto headquarters I should not worry if their scientists, employees, or security get in the way of my bullets.
(Disclaimer: I am not advocating going fucking postal at Monsanto., I merely point out the flaw in the logic of LowlyWorm who missed the NO fucking GM's cluetrain memo.)
In fact Monsanto has ruined farmers who did not want a fucking thing to do with Monsanto's fucking shit. And not only in the usa, it's basically anywhere crops grow, even in Guatamala they want Monsanto and it's GM's to get the FUCK OUT. My personal opinion (which really won't matter in the real world) is that all the farmers that got screwed, sued, bankrupt, or driven to suicide should be compensated 200% and for the no longer living, their surviving family members compensated 1000% . But that's a fuckin pipe dream, I bet the best you'll see is a class action suit. Which sucks.
Meanwhile enjoy your GM'd HFCS in just about everything you eat, can't wait to see your obese/fat/ADHD/ritalin sucking daughters and sons.
Whatever happened to pure sugar.. Shit.
> Without such a system, there's nothing stopping me from spending 10 years in a shed developing a revolutionary new vacuum cleaner, bringing it to market - and then you waltzing into a shop, buying one, copying it and selling it for half the price I do.
That argument is total tosh.
New products are being developed ever faster with each passing year, and many are on a 6-month cycle now. If it took you 10 years to R&D a new vacuum cleaner, then your business model is out of touch with reality and, just like that of the RIAA, it deserves to fail.
You don't deserve a monopoly just because your R&D is inefficient. Someone else will develop something as good or better, and will do it in 6 months.
I agree that the guy in all probability bred seeds from plants that surived in non-cultivated areas where he sprayed and he did this with full knowledge of what he was doing. However it seems to me that the judgement side-stepped intention as irrelevant. The way I read it (ok skim it) is that the undisputed fact the patented gene was found in the plants was enough to demonstrate infringement because he had "used" the gene. /IANAL
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Also offered are non-GMO soybeans. Its a shame, but the cost of production for those is much higher than it used to be because it they have to be tested for absence of GMO seeds. With careful production methods, you can get purity of 98-99.5% non-GMO; and this is with fields that are planted right next to each other. Cross pollination is not a big deal in soybeans. Now in corn, well, yes that is much harder to control pollination as it can pollinate other plants for tens of feet.
Seed companies are forced into working with Monsanto with much much higher levels of scrutiny than regular farmers. And if you mess up (or they just don't like you), they take away the privilege of selling their seed. Which, basically eliminates you in the market of selling seed. Other interesting things that they seem to do is finding issues with companies, threatening them, and then they end up buying the company out. Its funny then to watch how they can sell seed cheaper under their owned brands. They must be able to cut themselves a better deal on the licensing.
No wonder I'm posting AC......
>
d /43163/story.htm
Read more at:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsi
(yes, this is off topic for the overall article... but I felt it was important enough to post this rather than use my moderation points)
-- PGP keyID: 0x4C95994D
>We evolved in the same biosphere as insects, so changes to a plant to prevent the insect from being able to eat them may also have effects on us
;) I've known a lot of scientists who've spent years and years developing crops with no commercial incentive (either crops that aren't grown in the industrialized world, or adding traits that are only of value to subsistance/small scale farmers). You can talk all you'd like about how starvation is a policy problem, but it's people who paint all genetic engineering with too broad a brush who're holding up the approval of crops like golden rice (4,000 children die of vitamin-A deficency every day) and virus resistant cassava. Its very easy to say there's no need for GMOs when you live in a country where most nutrition problems are caused by too much food rather than too little.
Great, sounds logical. Until you learn that the CRY proteins expressed by bt crops crystalize into their toxic form only under highly basic conditions. Because we took different evolutionary paths for millions of years, our stomachs are highly acidic while insects stomachs are highly basic. On top of that you've been eating the CRY proteins on organic food for decades, as spraying with bacteria producing those proteins has long been considered an organic form on pest control.
"GMOs are designed for one reason, to make money."
Monsanto's GMOs are designed for one reason, to make money. Fixed that for you.
Actually the bt cotton is so popular in india that many farmers are buying "pirated" bt cotten seed on the grey market. Which makes me laugh, as I'm in favor of indian farmers not dying from the huge quantities of toxic pesticides (many illegal in the United States) they were previously forced to spray to control pests, and not so much in favor of Monsanto profiting off of that. If you're interested, googling could find you a graph of india's cotton production since bt cotton was introduced in 2002. I could just tell what it'll show, but why believe me when you can check for youself?
Monsato has revenue of over seven billion annually and invests barely 10% of that back into research. Someone elsewere in this discussion called them the Microsoft of the biotech seed world. They're using patents and huge market share (90% of geneticly improved germplasm on the market) to squeeze huge profits out of farmers pockets without continuing to innovate. But just because you hate microsoft's products and business tactics doesn't mean you attack the very idea of an operating system. So don't blame an entire technology because a terrible company controls 90% of the market? Ok?
Imagine DRM that spreads to the rest of the music on your computer/LAN.
(IANAL)
Can it be downloaded or is only the small segment re: fish available?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
That is an interesting take on it. In short, patents should be time specific to their domain. So, by this reasoning, software patents (if allowed at all) should have a maximum lifetime of about 2 years. That makes patenting software almost irrelevant, as the patenting time and costs exceed the value of the patent, since in 2 years the software has historically been obsoleted by the next version or 3.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
No, you most likely have to watch PBS for the 1.5 hr documentary and 2 hours of "fund drive" beggs.
Oh, and showing at 11PM. Yuck.
It does:
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/
Let's say that your "unatural" fishmato was shown to immunise those who ate it against all forms of cancer, aids, or some other modern day scourge - would you eat it?
"GM is not about feeding people. It's about starving people who can't afford to pay for your seeds."
GM is a tool, how it is used and by whom is a different issue alltogether. And speaking of starvation, didn't that nutcase Mugabe at one time reject a ship full of donated GM corn without bothering to ask his starving population what they thought?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
In my experience there are very few corporations out there that are unequivocally and genuinely evil. Some like Microsoft may be a little brutish, but Monsanto puts any kind of questionable activity they do to shame. Truly an entity I can say I am ashamed is even allowed to exist in our society.
Build a firewall between farms. A wall of fire that will keep the offending DNA at bay. Or how about these farmers start to think about producing a virus or herbicide that targets only the offending DNA. They shouldn't get sued for it because they are protecting their crops and themselves from infection by Monsantos DNA and their lawyers.
They don't though, so their patented GM genes end up in the crops of people who chose not to use their seeds. Since the genes are their property, they feel that they are entitled to money for them, and end up suing the farmers who used their products either unknowingly, or even unwillingly.
;) but the same could be said of any of the other thousands of bands out there who are begging for you to hear them!
The same can be said of the RIAA affiliated record companies and their copyrighted songs. Say I'm looking for the song The Fog by The Station. The link is to the actual song on archive.org. Now, say I'm trying to find it on bittorrent or kazaa. I'm very likely to download "The Fog" by Radiohead by mistake. Note that until I made this post I didn't know Radiohead had a song with that name, nor any of the other bands on the linked Google search. Guess what? I was looking for a song that an indie band wants you to hear, and I'm in danger of being sued by Radiohead's label!
Note that Dave and the guys from The Station are friends of mine, which is why I use them as an example
Bow to the corporations, their lawyers, and the US government that they own.
-mcgrew/a
I'll try to make this as simple as possible:
Healthcare shouldn't be an "industry." It is and should always be a service. It's not a product and it shouldn't be a product. Health shouldn't be treated as a commodity to be bought or sold and certainly not the exclusive domain of the wealthy or the privileged. Technology and development of technology ultimately belongs to all of humanity. It is a "favor" that any given governmental body rewards those who develop things that benefit the world a temporary monopoly, but it is exactly when that monopoly is abused or used as a weapon to stifle other business, the rights of individuals, or otherwise adversely affect the world or mankind, then that monopolist should be stopped in some way.
Business that serves people in delivering things that people need for survival such as healthcare and food should be held outside of normal business in that their practices do not follow the normal supply and demand market paradigm. The demand doesn't vary based on supply or pricing. There will always be a need for healthy foods. There will always be a need for quality healthcare. And to allow profit-seeking business to adversely affect peoples lives so that they can "protect their property" (which is ultimately given to them "by the people") is not just an immoral act, but an act against the interests of humanity.
As the food industry goes, (the original topic here?) should Monsanto and companies like them be allowed to freely pursue their aims, it would remove healthy organic foods from the market place replaced by "patented foods" which can only be grown and produced with their permission and sold by their rules. All the while, they are completely escaping the collateral harm they are causing. There are links being made, for example, between GM foods and the decline in the bee population. (Bees are an indispensable and irreplaceable part of farming and the world's ecosystems such that the extinction of bees would mean the extinction of man quite literally.) There have been many other problems identified with the use of "disease resistant" and other durable forms of GM foods as well, many of which lead directly to health problems. But as choice for healthy food diminishes, (and the cost for healthy food goes higher) the quality of life diminishes as well... they are presently not being held accountable.
"fortunately, the bootleggers take care of that"? Are you kidding me? Profiteering and illegal acts are a "fortunate" byproduct of an already humanity-abusive system?! Are you thinking your own thoughts to conclusion?
I have failed in being brief, but only because I see this as a critical issue.
It ends the problem of Monsanto suing farmers for growing Monsanto crops without permission. The crops just won't grow.
Minor irritations remain. Contaminated fields will have very slightly reduced germination. Monsanto-using farmers won't be saving their Monsanto seed. Neither of these is anything near as bad as the problems we have today.
Monsanto can even lay off most of their lawyers and get back to research.
This story was new back in Sept. 2006. Just breaking here now? ..oh well...in the least, it's good to be brought to light again.
its less than useless. Its actually harmfull. (I'm thinking of starting a class action lawsuit for the 3% of the population that can't digest the crap that they're polluting the food stock with.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Instead of debugging machine code, you'd be debugging genetic code.
The gene sequencing, splicing & replicating hardware already exists. (How do you think Monsanto did it?)
Now we just have to figure out what the 80+% "junk' DNA is...
Once the process of genomics gets sufficiently advanced, companies like Monsanto will go the way of all flesh.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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"patents on medicines are used to deprive people unable to pay for it from life"
Funny, I thought pharma patents were designed (albeit imperfectly) to convince someone to spend years and hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to design, produce, and test medications that are key to saving and improving human lives. Or maybe we don't need that, since the Indian, Brazilian, and Thai pharma companies are generating all the innovation anyway. Oh, wait, they're not.
The system can tolerate and survive with a certain amount of patent violation, just like a store can stay open even with a certain amount of shoplifting. It it gets too large, however, the store just shuts down, and then nobody can buy the product.
OTOH, if GM crops fertilize my non-GM corn, I can no longer sell that corn to Europe, I can no longer sell that corn as organic, and (based on Monsanto's licensing enforcement) I can no longer replant seeds from my own corn for next year's crop. I initially had the entire corn market available to me, but now I've unwillingly been forced into the subset that is the GM market. You have caused me tremendous economic harm. So heck yeah it should be your responsibility to either recompense me for that harm, or prevent it from happening in the first place.
..I doubt they could.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Monsanto has given me a brilliant idea.
1. Write and patent useless bit of code.
2. Insert code into virus.
3. Let virus propagate in wild, quietly.
4. Sue planet for using my code illegally.
5. Charge all PC users for 'testing services', and fine violators for using software containing my code.
6. Collect one million dollars.
7. Pinky to lip.
8. Laugh. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ahhh.
(Between 6-8, Sip cappuccino )
And I have an Business Methods patent on this! So forget you read it!!!
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
off your field upon request. First they'll spray Round Up on every square inch and then come back when all the non-GM plants are dead and rip the ones that're still standing out of the ground. Sounds like a good deal doesn't it?
Why don't farmers have a legal edge by saying, "The plants all look the same, the seed all looks the same, how the hell are we supposed to be able to tell the difference simply by looking at it?? We don't have genetic engineering labs in our barns, how are we supposed to reasonably be able to figure out which is which?"
I've hated Monsanto with a passion ever since the first cross-contamination trials, yet more and more I see the signs in farmer's fields proudly displaying which strain of GM crop they're growing that year. My ex's uncle has a certified organic beef farm. It had to be tested and certified that no pesticides or herbicides were used anywhere on his land for the 7 years prior to his application. No idea whether they have to recheck every so often to keep the certification up. His land is mostly pasture for the cattle though.
Back to Monsanto though, how do they have the right to enter your fields and test your crops without consent? Isn't that trespassing, or even theft since they're taking seeds/plants for testing that may not actually be their "property"?
Speaking of the political donations and such, us Canucks have an excellent federal law (IMHO) that limits campaign contributions to $2000 per individual (be it person or corporation), period. Sure, the CEO, chairman of the board, managing directors etc etc can all individually donate $2000 out of their own pockets, as well as the company donating it's $2000, but it really curbs the massive multi-million dollar donations that political campaigns in the US get from all sorts of health insurance, oil, pharmaceutical, etc companies, and the thousands of lobby groups for various things. I'm sure we have all the same sorts of crap here in Canada, but their influence ($$$) is limited by law.
Maybe that's something the US government should look at... doubt it'd ever happen though.
From http://dict.die.net/mile/:
If you consider a step as an advance of both feet instead of just one, then it's quite possible to walk a mile in 1000 steps.
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
There ought to be a section in patent law that explicitly allows farmers to continue saving seeds without financial liability. It's stupid and not in the interest of society as a whole that Monsanto thinks they can force farmers to stop saving seeds and replanting them.
I'm glad someone brought that up. When the patent expired, the efficiency of the steam engine shot up (see parent's link). And without patents, people still innovate because they need to make a buck. They just find other ways to get more value out of their invention. One way is old fashioned "trade secrets". As your product hits the market, the secret will eventually be reverse engineered but you have time to make your cash. More importantly, you have the time to produce something better than the other guys who have to play catch-up.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
While some claim that the pollinating bees are not being wiped out by genetically-modified (GMO) crops, keep in mind that many of these "foods" have been intentionally engineered to have high levels of "natural" pesticides; in other words, pesticides that plants evolved as a defense against insects.
A 1018BD684F0C6A62F01999A180E764B
a l/press/reports/gp_briefing_seralini_study.pdf
However, what is new is the introduction of genetic codes so the plants now generate new, never-before developed pesticides. Should we assume the multi-national corporations have done their due diligence to test the effects of these toxins in our food supply?
Actually, they are *suppressing* the scientific evidence of significant toxicity. And keep in mind, they are testing only *one* single added toxin -- do you eat only one type of food? It is common to find synergy in similar toxins; where one + one poison equals three times the danger. OK, enough of the reality; let me just skip to the links:
Scientific American; March 13, 2007; GMO corn causes liver, kidney problems in rats: study
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=
(interestingly, link is dead, search on "GMO Corn" now finds editorial "no harm from GMO has ever been demonstrated")
GreenPeace; Regulatory systems for GE crops a failure: the case of MON863. March 2007
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/internation
(this links to dozens of newspaper and magazine articles tracing this latest unethical
attempt to suppress scientific findings about health risks of GMOs)
Actually, I agree that better seeds are a good thing, and that finding crops which require less pesticides is wonderful.
I would just like to see advanced cross-breeding used to achieve those results, rather than splicing poison into our food supply.
To those who claim "no harm has been done" (aside from destroying the crops and lives of those attempting to live GMO-free!) let me pose one question. What is next?
Sure, adding these two toxins here, and those four poisons there hasn't killed anyone just yet....
But what happens in a few years, if we learn that after 3 years of exposure to those man-made chemicals the human liver gets turned to pudding? Several hundred thousand people start going jaundice and dying? And all our food sources are irretrievably contaminated? Do we start regulating then, in the midst of the plague?
No. We need to impose minimal levels of testing, as we would for new drugs being given to humans, immediately.
And *immediately* we need labeling of any foods containing GMOs.
Your state legislature, congressperson, senator, political action committee; and vote with your dollars by buying organic and non-GMO right now.
In short, the court believed that he sprayed the "infected" area to kill the canola *he* planted, then harvested and segregated the roundup resistant seed for future planting. It seems that for the crops at issue in the litigation, "95-98% of his 1,030 acre crop was pure Roundup Ready canola."
hawk
I was a dreamer like that once too. As a scientist who deals with genetics and cloning on a daily basis, that's exactly what I would have written, since that's what any sane man would think is happening.
But instead it turned out that Monsanto wasn't trying to engineer a crop that required less pesticide, they were busy engineering crops that could take logs and logs more.
That's because deducing the resistance factors for insects, and then cloning them, appears to be far more complicated and costly the just figuring out what enzyme metabolizes the pesticide into a plant poison, and then knocking it out.
Maybe one day, you and I will be right, in the meantime, Monsanto can suck on my masters degree.
1) by bootleggers I meant governments such as India and South Korea
2) I think top of the lin health care in 1990 was pretty damned good, and if we focus on getting that to everybody there is still room to use the rich to fund research (with expensive health care).
I wish there was insurance that only used new tech when is saved money, so that I was not stuck paying for the reseaech in high-tech drugs as I am now (or would be if it were government). In exchange I would be left with healthcare that the richest people in my grandparents generation couldn't dream of at a greatly reduced price.
Why is it that you feel everyone should be burdened with the responsibility of medical research, and not just those who are best able to pay for it?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I work at at natural foods co-op in Atlanta, and saw this today. Great effin' news. I printed a copy for the GM to see when he gets back in town. If anyone has seen The Corporation, there's a bit about Monsanto. Really nice to see some common sense happening at last. Thanks, PubPat!
The most dangerous man, to any government,is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the
mon: I'm sorry one of production lines has failed and we don't have enough seed for your country. If you pay this much more we'll see what we can do.
country: Since you destroyed our ability to produce our own grain, making us dependent on you, we don't have any choice but to pay. Do we?
news: Seed prices increased today. Monsanto blamed it on market forces.
Does anyone have a clue yet?
As for GM crops, I remember introduction of non-native insect and animal species to control pests. Many of us know how well that turned out. Now that we have are in invasive species hell, now they want to do it with genes. People haven't learned a damn thing. Proof in front of their eyes and still have to have their own way. And responsibility, look to our president and current government if you want to learn to avoid it. This is assuming anyone still can learn instead of repeat the past.
Monsanto should be held accountable for this crap on the spot since they are responsible for it.
Hey Slashdotters, many of you are in a position to do something, get off you asses and do something about it. If you can and you are not, you're part of the problem.
All I have to say is good news and fuck Monsanto.
This is insane even on its face.
Where did Monsanto get their seeds from? Plants. So there is already an existing item they derived their work from.
If they can patent a natural item that grows -- who did they pay to get the seeds? We would have all starved off long ago, if someone prior to Monsanto had been able to ride this gravy train.
And I'd say, that being able to sue someone for replanting their seeds or not signing a technology agreement would mean that people HARMED by their food -- would be able to place Monsanto with sole liability. Food allergies are going up -- could it be that bio-engineering in nuerotoxins into tomatos might be involved? Or what about a peanut gene finding its way into a potato -- aren't there a lot of people who may be bothered by peanuts?
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
... farmers whose crops get pollinated with their GM material because the farmers are now infringing on Monsanto's patents, can't the farmers just sue Monsanto right back for vandalizing their crops?
Call it 1000 steps per leg, and it's right. "Mile" is from Latin for "thousand paces". Count off every "To your left..." while marching, and you're doing it the Roman way.
We stopped eating "natural" food the day we stopped hunting and gathering.
When is the last time you saw wild corn? Yeah, that's what I thought.
"However with world-wide population growth continuing further improvements will be needed."
But GM doesn't solve that problem at all. At best it just postpones it (how long do you think it can postpone it for?), at worst it makes things worse (creates additional problems, farmers lose their farms/livelihoods to Monsanto etc). And what's likely? Go look at the powers backing GM and think[1].
I think education, emancipation of women, reduction of corruption and the judicious application of basic technology (e.g. condoms, sewage systems, piped water, roads) and sound economics will go a long way in dealing with the "problem" of population growth and starving/famine.
The advantage of education etc is you also get benefits in many many other areas.
In so many developed countries the population growth rate is low or even negative, and this is without a harsh "China-style" program.
There really is no need for GM at all.
[1] I can't see why it's not obvious to all of you. Take the drug industry for instance: only Bill & Melinda Gates and a few others are trying to solve the malaria problem and other "poor people" problems. The rest are busy trying to make lots of money from viagra, "slightly improved and patentable versions of old drugs" etc.
As it is, given the status quo, GM will be used for the benefit of rich people.
You and others can keep saying that GM will be used to ensure the poor will be fed, but really who are you kidding?
The mile was defined by the Romans as Mille Passum, literaly a thousand paces. In marching a pace is the distance between two placings down of the same foot. so he is right a thousand miles equates to a million paces.
my car is parked a million miles away. :(
See that's such a fallacy it's unfair. People have historically made breakthroughs and such simply for bragging rights... and still do! The race to map the human genome wasn't about patents even though one group had that goal firmly in mind. But prior to patenting drugs, there were all sorts of discoveries to benefit mankind. And the introduction of patents into medicine has only served to create an industry of more dangerous drugs. Where one drug may be quite effective, the drug companies will modify it enough to make it "new" and "patentable" with quite often dangerous or undesirable side-effects. And when that patent runs out, they change it again, get a new patent and play once more! All the while pushing for lower and lower testing standards to get these things out the door faster.
It's a very dangerous game they are playing with people's lives and it has cost many many lives unnecessarily. So I could argue that allowing drug patents at ALL has caused this sort of overly aggressive marketing push for medicine. The marketing side of the drug business has added a dangerous spin to the use of drugs in that doctors and patients are constantly being encouraged to prescribe and buy "newer" treatments instead of ones they know for certain will work with established regularity. Ever ask yourself why there are SO damned many pain relievers? Aspirin still works well for a lot of people!
The drive for spending "billions on research" isn't largely about finding new miracle drugs. It's largely about re-creating the same old stuff with a new patent so they can make higher profits. Medical breakthroughs, these days, seem a lot less frequent than before drug patents were introduced. I wonder why that is?
Um
Also, most pain relievers are old (Aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen). Any patents on them have long since expired.
You said "...bad example... aspirin has some side effects..."
I said "...why there are SO damned many pain relievers? Aspirin still works well for a lot of people!" Yeah, I more or less acknowledge that in my wording. "...for a lot of people" Not all, not even most. A lot... though suggesting "most people" is probably quite accurate. The most common side effects of aspirin might be allergic reactions but people who probably shouldn't use aspirin are those with the following: (I got this from some medical page... there's more there than I knew about)
asthma or seasonal allergies; stomach ulcers; liver disease; kidney disease; a bleeding or blood clotting disorder; heart disease, high blood pressure, or congestive heart failure; gout; or nasal polyps.
But really, I have seasonal allergies and have never had problems using aspirin and to my knowledge I have none of the other maladies listed. Most people don't have those problems, nor do they have allergic reaction to aspirin. It's a perfectly good example though it's not "absolute" but no example could be.
Good. Now let's look at other documents in the case. Why were Monsanto patents rejected? Four of them were tested and each was rejected completely - not a single claim stands.
Basically all of them were based on the results made in universities and published in Nature and the likes. These results were paid by taxpayers, our unfortunate farmer included...
I agree that Monsanto has spent billions and worked hard. But your working hard does not give you a right to go to a highway and rob people. You have invented an illegal business model to sell the results of your hard work? Go to jail - why I should care. This is capitalism, there will be a lot of honest people that will invent a proper, honest business model to sell the (same or better) results of their hard work. No?