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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.
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.
http://nelsonfarm.net/issue.htm
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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.