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

Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Gr33nJ3ll0]

It's nice to see somebody standing up to Monsanto. Never has one company been so close to totally controlling the food supply for the entire planet. Their abusive practices with farmers both home and abroad have been well documented, and yet our elected leaders turn a blind eye.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[cpu6502]

Patents are the real problem. Monsanto designed these seeds to be sterile, so you have to keep rebuying the same product year-after-year (instead of just reusing last year's seeds for the new crop). Also the seeds cross-polinate to non-Monsanto seeds, polluting nature's generic seeds with Monsanto genes. And worst of all:

Monsanto has a nasty habit of suing innocent farmers who have decided to continue using the "generic" seeds provided by nature. They send-round lawyers to harass the farmers, issue threatening letters, and file court cases. Oftentimes these lawsuits bankrupt the farmer, which was Monsanto's original intent: To eliminate people who are not using their products. Their tactics are very similar to how the bastards at the RIAA and MPAA act, but very much more destructive.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Picass0]

It's not every day you see someone make the RIAA and MPAA look like amateurs.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Jeng]

And how do those genes get in the seed?

Are you seriously suggesting that there are illegal seed factories out there making generic versions of Monsanto's seeds?

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[h4rr4r]

Why should the farmers pay for seed that Monsanto freely pollinated? No one forced Monsanto to let their plants spread that genetic material. They could require their growers to keep their plants only indoors.

Farmers should be able to sue Monsanto for contaminating their fields if anything.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[cpu6502]

>>>They sue farmers who knowingly use seeds with the Monsanto gene in them without paying. People on the internet seem to think if they keep repeating a lie, it'll become true.
>>>
TRUTH not lies. They sue people they SUSPECT are using the gene, based upon flimsy evidence like, "Farmer John Does uses a shaking machine to extract seeds from his crop, and saves the seeds for next year." Then they send-round the lawyers to *invade* the man's property, confirm such a machine exists, and start issuing cease-and-desist letters (presumption of guilt just because he saves his seed). If the farmer continues using the machine, the lawyers sue the man. They act VERY much like how RIAA and the MPAA act when they send extortionate letters & file lawsuits against "John Does" who are entirely innocent of any crime (except they used bittorrent).

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[chichilalescu]

this is not funny.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're called bees.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Bigby]

Mod parent up! A farmer can't help it if his field is being polluted by Monsanto's seed...even if it might be financially beneficial. If a coal mine created a pile of coal and the pile started spilling over into my property, then there are 3 options:

1. The coal mining company sues me for having their coal on my property (at no fault of my own)
2. I sue the coal mining company for putting their coal on my property
3. We call it a truce, and I just keep and sell the coal on my property

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Iceykitsune]

the seed is sterile the pollen is not

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[asvravi]

Wrong on the India farmers bit. Here is an extract from a Wikipedia article -

There have been claims of genetically-modified (GM) seeds (such as Bt cotton) being responsible for the farmer suicides.[25][26][27][28] A short documentary by Frontline (U.S. TV series) suggested that farmers using GM seeds promoted by Cargill and Monsanto have led to rising debts and forced some into the equivalent of indentured servitude to the moneylenders.[29]
A report released by the International Food Policy Research Institute in October 2008 provided evidence that the introduction of Bt cotton was not a major factor in farmer suicides in India.[30] It argues that the suicides predate the introduction of the cotton in 2002 and has been fairly consistent since 1997.[30][31] Other studies also suggest the increase in farmer suicides is due to a combination of various socio-economic factors.[32] These include debt, the difficulty of farming semi-arid regions, poor agricultural income, absence of alternative income opportunities, the downturn in the urban economy forcing non-farmers into farming, and the absence of suitable counseling services.[32][33]

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[sjames]

The thing is, we now know for a fact that plants can be bread for roundup readiness without 'stealing' Monsanto's gene (because it's been done), using only more conventional breeding and selection techniques. We also know that there are weeds growing wild that have the necessary resistance to roundup and that they are close enough to canola to breed with it. We know this because now that fields are being drenched in roundup routinely, we have weeds that are resistant to it.

Further, until Monsanto started it's war on everything not Monsanto, it was understood that the proprietary nature of a trait in a plant died once it crossed with someone else's plants. That is, you have some very special variety of corn. I am free to plant my perfectly ordinary corn on my adjoining property AND select for the amazing traits of your corn in the resulting future generations. I can even do so until I fully recreate your very special corn down to the last gene (but in practice I would stop once I had the desirable traits and had bread out undesirable ones, I wouldn't need or want a perfect copy).

Actual ownership of the gene itself is quite new and on somewhat shaky ground, especially since the gene was NOT created by designing a sequence of amino acids necessary to create the wanted trait, it was found and inserted into the genome.

A wrinkle you're missing is that Monsanto's traits actually contaminated the line of canola that Schmeiser had been developing using conventional breeding techniques for his own use for many years. He was faced with a choice of destroying years of his own work or just pretending the Monsanto gene didn't exist.

And that's the big issue. Monsanto crops contaminate the genome of non-Monsanto crops, then Monsanto sues the victim.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[Barefoot Monkey]

It wouldn't be a problem if the Roundup-Ready crops didn't produce pollen which would fertilise non-sterile seeds.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[quarkscat]

Stop bitching about Monsanto and fix the law.

Even better solution is to "fix" the Monsanto corporate board, permanently, like a gelding.

Were you aware that the lunchrooms of Monsanto facilities explicitly prohibit GMO foods for their employees, and at the insistence of those employees? Why are Monsanto employees treated better than USA citizens? Could it be that if USA citizens were informed of the GMO origins of many of their foodstuffs, that they would knowingly & willfully boycott those products?

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[X0563511]

Yep. Just because the plant can't produce a seed (pollen or no) they call it sterile.

That's like calling a man sterile because he can't give birth.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[hairyfeet]

Which is why these patents scare the fuck out of me. Am I the only one that is more than a little worried that these GMOs are basically handing over control of the food supply to a single corporation? its bad enough when patents stifle innovations but we are talking about the fricking food supply folks, its not like you can just eat dirt. Since its already been proven that GMOs can contaminate nearby crops this lets them have a nice racket, where you either pay them to use their "product" or your field gets contaminated by theirs...and you pay them MORE. Does anybody else find that more than a little fucking disturbing? I mean if I dump shit in my neighbor's yard I can't force them to pay me for the privilege, so why can Monsanto do the same thing by patenting the shit?

Finally a little weird possibly but...does anyone else look at the nasty shit Monsanto pulls and gets reminded of that scene in "Damien: Omen II" where the head of genetics at Thorn is bragging about how with control of the food supply thanks to GMOs they can pretty much call the shots? Not saying Monsanto is the debil but the way they've got GMOs rolling it does strike me that they are climbing past Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, and Blackwater on the "Holy shit, that's fucked up" scale of corporate nastiness. I mean its pretty bad when a lot of your current gameplan seems like its nicked from a movie about the rise of the fricking antichrist.

Re:Remove the yoke of Monsanto!

[sjames]

Here we have some successes at UC Davis breeding resistant lettuce..

Bolivian Cocoa farmers also managed. As a result, the DEA accidentally helped improve their yield with free roundup.

Here we have weeds developing the trait. Certainly they didn't even have the minimal help of conventional breeding. They most certainly weren't created by GM techniques. If it can happen by accident, it can be made to happen.

Too much control

[Midnight Thunder]

To have one company have total control over a food source is disturbing. They essentially have a monopoly and have risked destroying non GM crops through cross-contamination and I think it should be Monsanto that should be paying damages to farmers who do not want to deal with GM crops.

Broken business model.

[RightSaidFred99]

If Monsanto can't find a way to make money on their product without special government intervention like this, their business model is broken. The point where they make money should be (only) when they sell their product to a farmer. All this bribery and whatnot to get special laws or to abuse existing laws to prop up their business model is nonsense.

And I'm not even against GM foods, I find most of those people to be clueless Luddites. I'm just against their corrupt business model enabled by corrupt governments.

Re:Broken business model.

[h4rr4r]

How about not letting them patent living things?

I think that would be enough. A farmer should be able to save seed, or benefit from cross pollination. In the later case I can't even think of a reasonable argument against it. If you don't want to give away your plants genetic material then grow it indoors.

I think GM foods are fine, and even useful, but I don't think you should be able to make your neighbors responsible for material you are spreading freely.

It's their business model...

[jklappenbach]

Monsanto needs to rethink their business model. While some may have emotionally based reactions toward GM in general, the consensus is that it's an essential tool in the effort to feed the world's growing population. In order to continue, Monsanto needs to stop thinking in terms of genetics as intellectual property, and being paid for wherever their genomes spread. Instead, they need to focus on their relationship with the farmer, and making that relationship essential enough to pay for on a yearly basis. Aside from the product of seed, there are a wide number of services that Monsanto can and should be providing to farmers to help ensure that yields remain high as well as managing business and ecological concerns. Instead of alienating, they should be making themselves as useful as possible.

Finally, sanity in the courts

[gstrickler]

I know patents protect against independent invention, reverse engineering, etc. but if your product produces seed that "infects" another field or wind blows those seeds to another field, you are NOT entitled to royalties on those seeds.

Re:Finally, sanity in the courts

[Overzeetop]

Monsanto shouldn't be allowed to assert rights on second generation seeds. If they want to protect their GM products, they need to make them sterile.

Imagine if a company used their patented method to modify your genes to fix a genetic defect in you. For $100,000 they cured your diabetes. Then what would happen if they asserted that you owed them an additional $100,000 for every child you had, and every grandchild born within the patent term? If you didn't pay per child, and they were found to have the fixed gene, you owed them $150,000 each.

Re:Horrible summary

[Lisias]

the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled the company must repay royalties collected over the past decade.

What?! The linked article doesn't say anything of the sort!

From the same arcticle:

"On 12 June, the judges of the Brazilian Supreme Court of Justice ruled against Monsanto, deciding unanimously that the ruling by the Justice Tribune of Rio Grande do Sul, once it is made, should apply nationwide. Monsanto has declined to comment on the case."

So, Judges of Rio Grande do Sul ruled out that Monsanto should repay back the last decade royalties. And the Brazilian Supreme Court stated that once this ruling is confirmed, will be valid for the whole country!

So, yes, it says exactly that - but not directly, as any person that is not a fool can see :-)

Re:What if Monsanto is less wrong?

[the eric conspiracy]

I can't believe this misinformation about the Schmeiser case is so wide spread.

The reason Schmeiser lost his case was not due to a small accidental contamination of his crops. Schmeiser noticed a an area of his land that had volunteer canola plants on it, sprayed it to select for Round-Up Ready plants, saved the seed from the surviving plants, and then replanted 1000 acres with the seed, and as well resold some of the selected seed.

The result was a crop that was some 95% RoundUp ready canola due to intentional planting of selected seed.

This was a bald-faced case of intentional patent infringement, not some accidental case of a few wind pollinated plants.

From Wikipedia:

The Canadian Court's ruling concluded: ... on the balance of probabilities, the defendants infringed a number of the claims under the plaintiffsâ(TM) Canadian patent number 1,313,830 by planting, in 1998, without leave or licence by the plaintiffs, canola fields with seed saved from the 1997 crop which seed was known, or ought to have been known by the defendants to be Roundup tolerant and when tested was found to contain the gene and cells claimed under the plaintiffsâ(TM) patent. By selling the seed harvested in 1998 the defendants further infringed the plaintiffsâ(TM) patent."