Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case
Pigskin-Referee writes in with news of the Supreme Court's decision in a dispute between Monsanto and an Indiana farmer over patented seeds. "The Supreme Court has sustained Monsanto Co.'s claim that an Indiana farmer violated the company's patents on soybean seeds that are resistant to its weed-killer. The justices, in a unanimous vote Monday, rejected the farmer's argument that cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator are not covered by the Monsanto patents, even though most of them also were genetically modified to resist the company's Roundup herbicide. Justice Elena Kagan says a farmer who buys patented seeds must have the patent holder's permission. More than 90 percent of American soybean farms use Monsanto's 'Roundup Ready' seeds, which first came on the market in 1996."
Actually, no.
From TFA:
He went to a grain elevator that held soybeans it typically sells for feed, milling and other uses, but not as seed.
Nothing indicates that they sold him the soybeans to be planted. They sold them for feed, milling, or other uses, but he decided to plant them instead.
Which to me just highlights how bad it is to allow something self-replicating (like plant seeds) to be patented. You can buy the seeds and grow the plants, but the 'fruit' you get from the plants (which are just new seeds) you're not allowed to plant. Frankly, it's stupid IMO, and one more reason patent law needs a major overhaul.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
They didn't sue the elevator because they did nothing wrong. They were selling the soybeans for 'feed, milling, and other uses'. Not for seed to be planted. You really can't do anything else useful with soybeans, so there you go.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
The simple matter is that the farmer's recourse is to now sue the seller (operator of the grain elevator), for selling seeds he is not authorized to sell
Wrong. Because the farmer wasn't sued for planting and growing the seeds. That was NOT the issue in this case, although you would be led to believe it was by the crappy Slashdot summary. The issue was that Bowman (the defendant):
1) Bought seeds that were mostly Roundup Ready
2) Planted them
3) Sprayed the crop with glyphosate (the herbicide in Roundup) to kill the non-GMO plants
4) Saved the resulting 100% pure RR beans, and planted them the following year
This was a case of blatant, intentional infringement. Bowman deliberately concentrated the RR gene, and benefited from it by spraying with glyphosate (which would kill non-RR bean plants). Bowman openly admitted that this was what he did. His defense was not "I didn't do it", but rather "I have a right to do it". Well the Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. If he had simply bought the bean seeds, and grown them without herbicides, there would have been no issue.
Doesn't this violate the first sale doctrine?
The first sale doctrine gets you out of licensing terms but it doesn't allow you to make more copies of the patented article:
The bigger issue here is:
Monsanto has a policy to protect its investment in seed development that prohibits farmers from saving or reusing the seeds once the crop is grown. Farmers must buy new seeds every year.
Only farmers that sign a contract with Monsanto are bound by this agreement. If you want to save your own seeds, you are free to do so. The defendant in this case was NOT sued for just planting seeds that happened to be GMO. He was sued for deliberately spraying his crop with glyphosate herbicide to kill non-RR plants in order to isolate the RR gene, and then he saved the resulting 100% RR beans and planted them the following year. Portraying him as an innocent and unwitting victim is absurd. He knew exactly what he was doing.
it must be tough to be a farmer nowadays.
Which is why farmers use seeds with GM traits. These traits reduce many of the input costs (fertilizer, fuel, time, pesticides, etc.) associated with growing soy and corn.
Farmers are professionals, and they are more than capable of making decisions about which technologies to adopt for themselves. These are not victims FORCED to buy something against their will, but reasonable people who weigh the costs and benefits of each technology and make their own determinations of the value. My group sells to many of these farmers (on the animal production side), and they are not passive sheep buying whatever our salesmen tell them is best. They do their homework, run the numbers, bargan hard and play one vendor against another just like any other procurement officer, because it is their own money on the line.
Fact is, farmers have been buying new seeds every year for far longer than GM seeds have been commercially available. I could be mistaken, but i belive that contracts prohibiting keeping seeds also pre-date GM seeds. Seed companies have made their money for decades by developing deep crop improvement research and development pipelines. Because they hire lots of PhD carrying crop geneticists, they can generate more improvement from year to year than a farmer can do on his own, with his already limited time. This enables farmers to outsource their crop improvement to specialists who are more efficient, allowing them to devote more effort on what they are best at, Growing the food. GM is just a new tool to help the seed companies, and the farmers that buy their seeds achieve the goals they have been pursuing for years.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Most notable is the last paragraph of the court's ruling:
Our holding today is limited—addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a self-replicating product. We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose. We need not address here whether or how the doctrine of patent exhaustion would apply in such circumstances. In the case at hand, Bowman planted Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct.
If he didn't use the pesticide he probably would have been fine. Since various sources said about 90% of the beans would be GMO-infected he could simply have planted the seeds directly and would have had a much stronger defense.
And of course, the court left the more thorny issues open for a future lawsuit.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
As much as the idea of patented seeds is ridiculous and dangerous (IMO), this particular argument wasn't going to fly.
The more important part of the decision (FTA): "But Kagan said the court's holding only "addresses the situation before us."" There was no wider ruling on whether seeds are patentable as IP or anything sweeping like that.
Though true, it's also a pretty good implication that seeds are patentable as IP, because patent ineligibility would be something the Supreme Court could raise sua sponte (deciding an issue on their own initiative, as opposed to merely deciding issues addressed by the lower court).
Copying a peice of work on a computer still requires you to do it. Their plants require nothing but mother nature.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
http://nelsonfarm.net/issue.htm
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
> Neither side actually cites a court case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser
The plants may require nothing but mother nature, but in this case the farmer did a lot of work to propagate them, actively sowing, harvesting, saving them, and resowing them for 8 generations.
What you describe is not illegal, and if he had merely done what you describe he would not have been sued. What you leave out, is that during each of those generations he sprayed his crop with glyphosate (the herbicide in Roundup) to kill any non-GMO plants and isolated and concentrated the patented gene, while simultaneously benefiting from the patent by ridding his fields of weeds in a way that someone using non-RR seeds would not be able to do. The issue here was active, deliberate and sustained infringement. Planting random seeds, and even replanting those seeds if grown without active use of the RR properties, was not an issue in this case. I have never heard of any case where Monsanto has sued anyone for unintentional infringement, despite lots of mythology to the contrary.
The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category. The appellate court also discussed a possible intermediate scenario, in which a farmer is aware of contamination of his crop by genetically modified seed, but tolerates its presence and takes no action to increase its abundance in his crop. The court held that whether such a case would constitute patent infringement remains an open question but that it was a question that did not need to be decided in the Schmeiser case.(Paragraph 57 of the Appeals Court Decision[6])
So, in Canada at least, it's still an open question then. Thanks.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
This is about selling more Roundup. In case you don't know what that is, it's a herbicide that would burn your throat if you got a whiff of it.
While I have no love lost for Monsanto and their IP enforcement goon squad, the herbicide in question is a pretty benign substance to work with. Check out the glyphosate page on wikipedia for an overview of it's activity and interaction with people. While it's not something you'd want to intentionally ingest, it's not a potent inhalation or other hazard.
Actually, could such farmers potentially sue Monsanto for polluting their fields?
Yes and no. Yes, because at least one farmer has actually done so, and won $660. No, because that was a default judgement in small claims court, and sets no precedent. If Monsanto had showed up and actually taken the suit seriously, it is unlikely he would have won. The reason is that the cross pollination causes no monetary damage. If a farmer is growing organic soybeans, they are still considered organic even if they contain some incidental pollination from RR fields. If you can't show damages, you have no case.
Turns out, the patent expires soon. Monsanto seems to be pretty reasonable about it:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/roundup-ready-patent-expiration.aspx
After patent expiration, you can use the old soybeans royalty free. Or you can choose the newer, higher-yield varieties they have constructed since (and that will themselves expire at some point).
Seems to me the patent system here is actually working as it should.
There was a big fight going on between organic farmers and Monsanto....
:P
Was, because the case was thrown out a year ago because the organic farmers simply couldn't cite an example of what they claimed happens. They created a false controversy, couldn't cite an example, judge threw out the case. Try to keep up with the latest news if you're going to attempt to use it in your arguments.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.