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The Supreme Court To Rule On Monsanto Seed Patents
Fluffeh writes "Can a farmer commit patent infringement just by planting soybeans he bought on the open market? This week, the Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on the question. The Court is pondering an appeals court decision saying that such planting can, in fact, infringe patents. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled, as it had on several previous occasions, that patent exhaustion did not cover second-generation seeds. The Supreme Court has now asked the Solicitor General, the official in charge of representing the Obama administration before the Court, to weigh in on the case."
Monsanto is about to realize a dream: The absolute ownership of the food supply.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I see it more that the farmer should sue Monsanto for contaminating the seeds he buys - he expects to get regualr bean seeds instead through no fault of his own, the seeds have been contaminated with genetically modified components.
Ruling that any farmer got it (contaminated agriculture) through natural processes as "infringing" is ludicrous.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Not going to hope for much here, seeing as Monsanto already owns the government.
I'm looking forward to a day when living things cannot be patented - especially things which can self-proliferate in a natural setting. I might need to go to another planet to achieve this, unfortunately.
Doesn't that render it close enough to a monopoly for the government to be able to step in and regulate it?
Government is already regulating it by allowing companies to patent seeds. That's exactly the problem.
If you funded the invention of a new crop version and wanted to recoup your hundreds of millions of development costs, you would not want the court to eliminate patent rights for 2nd generation crops.
This attitude is a problem. Why should anyone be forced to prop up a poorly thought out business model? Farmers have been manipulating genes for thousands of years.. is there a patent on corn or bananas or any number of domesticated crops? No, because the reward to the farmers was a more productive crop.
Maybe monsanto needs to change the way they do business rather than try to force everyone else to do so.
I would challenge "supremacy of the military" on the grounds that our Commander in Chief is, and always has been, a civilian. A veteran, perhaps, but never an active-duty soldier. And the second-in-command since 1949, the Secretary of Defense, is also a civilian
The actual criteria, as explained on the web page, isn't how high active military are in the political chain, but rather how much a country spends on military and how often it uses its army as a solution to the problems.
Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
And as seen from outside (from the other side of the atlantic pond), the USA seem to fund disproportionately a lot their armed forces, and seem to think that fighting wars (Irak, Afghanistan) is the best solution. Active soldiers are seen as doing something patriotic. These wars have cost unbelievible amounts of money, yet the country still hesitate to spend money on public health (the whole debate about medicare/medicaid).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The summary uses the term "patent exhaustion", which some people might not be familiar with. This is the doctrine of first sale for patents. Patents don't just cover the manufacture, sale, or distribution of protected devices/etc, they also cover the use, private, commercial, or any other kind of use. The law as written would therefore mean that you can patent your device, sell it, and then sue your customers for using it. So the courts have decided that OBVIOUSLY they can't do that, so the first time you sell a device, your patent interests are "exhausted" and can no longer be used to prevent the use of that particular device.
This is a complicated court case because patent exhaustion is not written down anywhere, it's a wibbly wobbly thing. But as usually stated, it covers the one device. You cannot buy one patent device, and then make your own copies and sell them, because only the one device is "exhausted", and the patent is not nullified. On the other hand, patent law says that if you buy a patented device that can make things, then patent exhaustion also allows you to sell the things made by that device, if they are not covered by patents. That is to say, although things made by a patented process are protected by patent law, if you can legally use such a process (whether by license or patent exhaustion) the patent rights no longer extend to the product. So the court here must decide if that includes self-replication.
On the one hand, the idea behind the Doctrine of Exhaustion is that its pretty obscene to sell somebody something and put the burden on THEM to research all of the currently valid patents to make sure they're allowed to use the damn thing. So that should imply that Exhaustion applies to all intended uses of the patented product. So if a seed is intended to be grown, patent exhaustion would apply to all uses of the final plant. Since for thousands of years farmers have replanted crops using seeds from the last generation, that should be an inalienable intended use of a plant. On the other hand, if you have a Star Trek Replicator which you have rightly patented, its intended use is to make things. So if it can make patented parts of itself, that is part of its intended use? (Other posters here have suggested such a thing). I'm not sure of that. I think for that to apply its intended use would have to be self-replication specifically. That is to say, its purpose is not to make itself specifically, but to make whatever pattern you give it. So patent exhaustion on the replicator would not extend to pattern files you feed it. Besides which, the Doctrine of Exhaustion only applies to unencumbered sales, not to licensed sales or leases or anything else. So if it was truly a concern, they could make you sign a license when you buy the replicator, which explicitly enumerates how you may use the patented device.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI