Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case 579
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 farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:3, Insightful)
How much would you bet that after losing to Big Asshole Corporation #1 he probably wont have the money for a lengthy court battle with Smaller Asshole Corporation #2?
Not a good case (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering why Monsanto didnt sue the elevator instead. Obviously sueing your distributor and claiming they have no right to sell is a short sighted activity, but they are the ones who violated the contract. I just cant wrap my head around the concept that you can purchase something not under contract, that someone else can then come along and sue you for having purchased under incorrect terms.
I guess the car analogy is that if you buy a stolen car, you are in possession of a stolen vehicle , but the real wrong doer is the guy selling 50 stolen cars on his used car lot.
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So much for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
But in this case...the product replicates ITSELF.
That's the difference.
If Monsanto doesn't like it..why don't they make their genetically modified crops self-terminating?
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Have any farmer groups tried turning the tables, and suing MONSANTO for putting a product out, that infects a farmers non-gmo plants? Shouldn't Monsanto be required to make sure their products self terminate, and can't spread to 'infect' regular crops?
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem here - He did use "regular" seeds: "cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator". Monsanto seeds don't come out an easily-identifiable fluorescent purple, he had no way of knowing which seeds came from Monsanto licensees and which came from traditional seeds.
For all of post-nomadic human history, farmers have taken a small portion of last year's harvest and used it to plant this year's crop. Standard Operating Procedure.
Unfortunately for we mere humans, Monsanto couldn't have begged for a better "test" case to go before the USSC. Even I have difficulty feeling bad for Farmer Dale, given that he deliberately tried to reproduce Monsanto's IP commercially without licensing it. But the underlying idea of taking seeds from the community hopper and planting them, perfectly kosher. It completely disgusts me that this case effectively sets a precedent, placing on the farmer the burden of separating the non-fluorescent-purple Monsanto seeds from the non-fluorescent-purple legal-to-grow seeds.
Far more disturbingly, though - Apply this same legal precedent to genetic therapies for human disease. A custom gene patch cures Alzheimer's forever? Great! Except - Hope you remember to pay your yearly license fee, because Pfizer owns your kids.
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what else expires? Roundup's usefulness,
The backstory: Roundup is a weedkiller. It's also a plant killer. So Monsanto developed a soybean with roundup resistance. Lazy (uh, I mean efficient) farmers could just spray roundup everywhere to kill off the weeds.
If you've heard of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, you know what happened next.
So now you have roundup-resistant super weeds and farmers need to manually weed their crops. By the time the patent expires, there will be no advantage over heirloom soybeans (well, if you can even find heirloom soy beans).
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:5, Insightful)
How does this help anyone?
Well, obviously it helps Monsanto as a company, and all of their employees involved in GMO product development, marketing, sales, and the relevant office staff who work in a supporting role. Those people far outnumber the numbers employeed by this particular farmer.
A local farmer is just trying to feed mouths and make ends meet yet the Big Pharma et al get to shit all over the little man once again
Or, you could look at it as one person trying to take food from the mouths of everyone working at Monsanto (who is not a pharmacutical company BTW). If this farmer had been allowed to do this legally, then Monsanto (and other seed companies that use GM technology, which is most of them) would have to take a serious look at whether they could afford to develop new GM traits. GM seed development and approval costs millions of dollars and takes about a decade. If it became legal to buy GM seeds intended for milling and then plant them, then the price for new seeds would no longer be able to support future developments. That would cost the jobs of thousands of crop geneticists, supporting staff, sales staff, etc. Even if you don't like GM on principle (which is stupid, myopic, and decidedly anti-science), those are a lot of people who depend on the current system.
What little faith I have left in humanity is quickly diminishing due to these wankers
It is people such as yourself who are far more dangerous to MY faith in humanity. You obviously have no direct connection to agriculture, and that's OK. Only about 1.2 to 1.5% of Americans are involved in any form of food production. However, you are a strong, vocal critic of a field about which you know next to nothing. In fact, it is probably safe to assume that you don't even know enough to be aware of how little you know (something mention here on /. not too long ago). I don't tell teachers how to teach, or mechanics how to fix cars. I don't tell lawyers what the law says, or engineers which rocket fuel is best to get us back into space. I'd appreciate it if you would at least talk to the professionals in the field before believeing whatever half-baked hack-job of a documentary or website it was that gave you the misguided impression that you actually understand anything about agriculture or GM crops.
Re:This is disgusting!! (Score:4, Insightful)
I frequently hear this claim, and I frequently hear the other side declare that it's bullshit. Neither side actually cites a court case. Does this actually happen, or not?
Of course not. How could anyone cite a court case that doesn't exist?
When pressed, the claimers usually cite the case of Percy Schmeiser [wikipedia.org], the farmer portrayed in the film "Food Inc.". But what Schmeiser actually did was take deliberate action over a number of years to isolate and concentrate the RR genes by repeatedly spraying his crops with glyphosate herbicide to kill off any non-GMO plants. We was sued for blatant, intentional infringement. Yet he is still the default poster child for how Monsanto is victimizing poor innocent farmers.
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
they give society a net gain.
In this particular case, the net gain to the society is mostly around the hips, upper thighs and lower bellies. USA is one of the few countries in the world where obesity is correlated wit poverty, not wealth. The super cheap corn, and HFCS contribute to that a lot. And corn became super cheap because it was engineered to be roundup ready.
Wait till that gene transfers to the weeds. Then there will be famine and all the gain the society would make it catastrophic.
Re:So much for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rock and a hard place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
I just cant wrap my head around the concept that you can purchase something not under contract, that someone else can then come along and sue you for having purchased under incorrect terms.
The issue is not in the terms of purchase but in the lack of license to create new instances of the patented item. When Monsanto, or affiliate, sells seeds to a farmer they license the farmer to produce new instances of the patented item from those seeds in one growing season. After that season they have no license to create new instances of the patented item. If the farmer saves some of the crop and plants them in subsequent seasons any crops generated from those seeds are now unlicensed copies of a patented item.
The crux of the situation is that one can sell properly licensed copies of patented items, as the elevator operator did, but can not create new copies of a patented item without a license, as the farmer did.
Re:So much for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Its worse than that. When monsanto's "patented" pollen contaminate non GMO plants, the offpring is suddenly monsanto's property.
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:4, Insightful)
If you had just driven it around and hadn't hit the "copy myself" button: no infringement.
Re:So much for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:So much for that! (Score:4, Insightful)
> Just remember that without those higher crop yields,
This isn't about "higher crop yields". 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.
Let's not kid ourselves that there is any altruistic motivations at work here.
Genetic manipulation of seeds is done by poison salesmen, not farmers.
Re:So much for that! (Score:4, Insightful)
You've not heard of "drift" have you (which I appreciate is not what happened here), where the non-GMO crops are cross pollinated by GMO crops. Then Monsanto (among others) sue the hapless farmer, take his farm and throw him off his own land. All because that's the way nature works.
Also by "plenty" I assume you mean less than 10% as per the article.
Re:So much for that! (Score:3, Insightful)
not true and not related to the actual facts of the case. while monsanto deserves a lot of bad press, and is an abusive company, /. suffers from too much knee jerk monsanto bashing without regard to the facts.
whether you like them or hate them is irrelevent. you dont get to ignore the facts.
or as a intelligent man once said: you have hte right to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the car analogy is that the Toyota you bought drives past a Honda and gets some of the exhaust residue on it. Then the guys from Honda come around, swab your car, say that it tests positive for being a Honda, and rape you over the table.
The seeds he bought weren't Monsanto seeds, they had just been pollinated (contaminated) by Monsanto plants that were upwind. The Monsanto genetic pollen is now all over his field, and any new soy beans he plants will have the Monsanto genetic fingerprint, meaning he will never be able to buy another brand ever again.
I think an enterprising lawyer should partner up with a genetic testing company and go around to the small farmers to test their seeds before they plant to certify them as Monsanto GM free. Then periodically test the plants throughout the season, and as soon as any sign of Monsanto contamination shows up, sue Monsanto and every farmer within 30 miles that uses Monsanto seed for environmental contamination and plant rape.
Huge class action damages here.
Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell (Score:5, Insightful)
So change the law.
It may be dumb. we may all disagree with it. But the court made the right decision for the case at hand. the job of SCOTUS is to interpret the laws as written, not write laws themselves or fix them to how they should be. in this case SCOTUS made a limited finding in favor of monsanto. now whether we agree with the farmer that he should have been able to do it or not, is a seperate issue. as the law stands, what he did was against it (the law) and he knew it.
unfortuantely right now patent aw is largely a one size fits all arena. and if we want to fix that, then we need to fix the laws behind it.
It's time to start engineering human diseases (Score:5, Insightful)
Monsanto's monoculture crop is a global disaster waiting to happen. The first disease that comes along which has evolved to target Monsanto's GM plants will wipe out a HUGE portion of the world's food supply.
But what if some human disease was engineered and passed around the globe in an epidemic which rendered people allergic to Monsanto's GM crops? Now we've got a world of useless and even dangerous plants which are essentially out of control.
And to top it all off? You might be able to sue all the sick people who contract the disease! :) Did you forget to patent the genetic material of your new disease?
Re:So much for that! (Score:5, Insightful)
What you've just described is normal selective breeding, as practiced in agriculture for thousands of years. If he had discovered that some of his crop had a naturally-occurring resistance to glyphosate (I'm so pissed I won't even say the brand name!) and selectively bred his crop to express that gene, that would be no problem. And that's exactly what he actually did do, except that his seed stock was contaminated with genetically-modified trash seeds. How the fuck is that his fault?
In other words:
Asassinate the fucks already? (Score:0, Insightful)
Why do Monsanto execs get to go through life fucking everyone and everything in their path and nothing can be done about it?