Monsanto May Have To Repay 10 Years of GM Soya Royalties In Brazil

scibri writes "Biotech giant Monsanto is one step closer to losing billions of dollars in revenues from its genetically-modified Roundup Ready soya beans, after the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled the company must repay royalties collected over the past decade. Since GM crops were legalized in 2005, Monsanto has charged Brazilian farmers royalties of 2% on their sales of Roundup Ready soya beans. The company also tests Brazilian soya beans that are sold as non-GM — if they turn out to be Roundup Ready, the company charges the farmers 3%. Farmers challenged this as an unjust tax on their business. In April a regional court ruled against Monsanto, though that ruling has been put on hold pending an appeal. The Supreme Court, meanwhile has said that whatever the final ruling is, it will apply throughout the whole country."

Comments

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[cpu6502]

>>>If the world were populated with jackassery such as yourself, more people would die, not less, as technology would lag as people gave up developing it because it got looted as soon as they developed it.

Indian farmers are killing themselves in droves because they can't repay their loans to Monsanto, and the supposed "better" crops are dying instead of growing. In fact farmer suicide is now the #2 killer in India. If you consider this a "better world" then you're really F'd in the head.

I'm not opposed to the idea of patents and copyrights, but when they make things WORSE instead of better, then they are not achieving their original goals. (And 100+ years is nucking futs. They should not last any longer than one generation/20 years. That's plenty of time for the inventor or artist to earn-back money for his labor.)