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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."
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, resulting in damages xzy as stipulated in the costs of the lawsuits the farmer had to defend itself against.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Did you read TFA? The farmer knew exactly what he was doing and was trying to get around the patent to save money... he got caught.
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.
That's a very harsh policy and they probably charge a premium for their seed, it must be tough to be a farmer nowadays.
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
On the other hand we have Monsanto who spent millions of dollars creating genetically modified seeds that are resistant to their herbicides. There needs to be a way for them to make a profit from that investment.
The issues; If there is no patent protection the seed manufacturer would have to make all their investment back in one year as any subsequent seeds can be saved and re-sold by farmers. Where is the incentive to invest in the technology if there is no way to benefit from it?
The logical fallacy here is that selling the seeds is the only way they profit from this. The true fact is that they created the seeds to sell Roundup, which previously could not be used by farmers without killing the crops. They discovered that because of how fucked-up patent law is, they could also force the farmers to re-buy the seeds from them every year, in addition to buying the Roundup.
This is not an issue of Monsanto not getting their money out of the research - the yearly sale of Roundup in vast quantities to the farmers does that. It's an issue of Monsanto using a broken patent system to double-dip into farmers' pockets after locking them into the seeds.
Its worse than that. When monsanto's "patented" pollen contaminate non GMO plants, the offpring is suddenly monsanto's property.
Oh BS. There are plenty of high yield seed varieties that aren't own by Monsanto or anyone else. Besides 'Roundup Ready' is just a gene for Roundup resistance and the weeds have already appropriated said gene for their own purposes, thankyouverymuch. The way to feeding the world's poor is not to rely on herbicide resistance.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
Sorry, but the patent only applies to the seed made/raised by Monsanto.
Once it's been through a single planting / harvesting - it is no long the exact same seed - mutations have set in.
Unless it is 100% genetically identical to the seed sold by Monsanto, whether or not it carries the RR gene sequence is irrelevant - the patent applies to the entire gene sequence, not just the bit that makes it RR.
So once a single dna chain is modified (ie through natural selection) - it is no longer the patented product.
End of story.
The judges are WRONG.
They were selling the soybeans for 'feed, milling, and other uses'. Not for seed to be planted.
Well clearly Monsanto need to add DRM to their seeds because we can't have people buying seeds and then using them in an unlicensed fashion. I suppose the method that would work best in this case is to install a root kit.