Potato farmers cry foul as PepsiCo sues them
thehindu.com
thehindu.com
These strategies have taken place in the past with GMOs, and I suspect will happen again.
Branded seed sowing can be subject to some restrictions for a single contract and crop for the purpose of the destination of the produce, but the extent of those restrictions should stop there and should not apply to 2nd generation seeds or their crops.
I've had my share of shady contracts with 10 year long confidentiality agreements. Never again.
Indian farmers have all my sympathy and support.
The plague of NDAs has moved to farming? Is there anything more you're allowed to say on the matter?
NDA's are useful for signing contracts with neighbouring farmers so that they cannot argue against differential treatment regarding prices. Of course everybody knows who is being paid what, but no one can officially complain.
So I'm assuming it's Monsanto, then
I never approved of this concept with iPhones, where Apple clearly asserts residual ownership of the phone; and the same concept with Tesla, where parts and repairs can't be done by third parties. Nope, nope, and nope. Find another way. I have a superseding right as a voter and citizen to petition a legislative alternative to certain nonsensical free market outcomes.
So did the farmers "steal" the potatoes used for lays chips, or did they have no choice in their selection due to factors?
Monsanto's sterile "terminator seeds" technology are a great example of this same issue.
The case seems to revolve around whether they are allowed to do under Indian law.
I burned through the top 100 sci-fi books (audiobook versions, but still) in 2015. Somehow this wasn't on the list.
Patenting living organisms should not be allowed. It effectively gives a corporation veto power on the reproductive process of a plant or animal by making it illegal to allow that plant or animal to reproduce without permission. This flies in the face of basic biology, evolution, and agricultural practice.
https://www.nabard.org/auth/writereaddata/tender/1608180417N...
I'm not relating this in any way to this lawsuit, just your general idea that intellectual property should not apply to a living thing.
Once we can, I'm sure someone's going to try to make a Michael Phelps or Barry Bonds.
"Sort of. He can't have sex unless I allow it."
Joe decided that big business was not among his aptitudes.
"Years ago, the Quail received a gene augmentation that gave him enough charm to succeed despite his lack of intellect. Since I'm the one who invented his personality genes, I hold the copyright on his character. The Quail can't reproduce without my permission. Nor can he retransmit or rebroadcast his genes without the expressed, written consent of WonkaGen Inc."
But if you change it sligthly to owning copyright over some dog breed, that emotional objection would dissipate in my opinion.
So if someone were to cross two or three breeds of dogs and make a stable, new breed, can that someone patent it and own it?
What about every single pup that is eventually born? Can the breeder claim intellectual property rights over it?
Of course this is nonsense, but some companies will try and are trying their luck.
> Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse?
Yes. If you want to get paid to improve onions, get paid for work you will do not work you have done (research grants, onion growers associations, etc). Rent-seeking by owning living things' genetics is, I think, immoral. Rent-seeking, in general, that is patterns that allow you to do one-time work to get perpetual rights to future income is immoral when it passes a certain threshold.
When he was getting his doctorate his advisor was investigating several proteins that might do fun brain things and handed the specific testing of each off to a different doctoral candidate, one of those proteins ended up being super interesting and netting the candidate a good deal of clout and a foot in the door for high funded research - it was not his.
So rent-seeking compensation for innovations will over-compensate the winners, but the losers who sunk just as much time into research will be deprived of any compensation.
Patents on genetics are term limited, not perpetual.
If it is being used as a machine to edit genetics as a way to patent genes, then yes.
If it is being used as a machine to do something less life related, maybe not.
Actually, you can as of 2017, in a specific set of circumstances:
In a 6–2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. in which it held that aspects of Varsity Brands Inc.’s cheerleading uniform designs are protectable under the U.S. Copyright Act.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-copyright...
But, as they are useful articles (why copyright doesn't apply in general, though it can apply to specific decorative elements—software, apparently, isn't generally useful), you can patent clothing designs and design elements, with the same non-obviousness, etc., rules applicable to other patents of useful invention. So that's kind of an odd argument to use against patentability of a useful article.
The challenge (to me) comes down to all of the weird edge cases that come up when you try to actually implement that protection.
- Keeping some portion of harvested product to plant next year is how we've farmed since we started farming. Is that now illegal? Does it require a licensing fee?
- Some seeds blow in the wind, now the northern 10% of your neighbours plot has the fancy seed you paid for and they didn't. Are they "breaking the law"? What happens if they save some % of that seed for next year, is that doubly illegal?
- If a consumer of the produce saves the seeds, then plants them in their own garden, are they breaking the law?
These things all get really ugly really fast. The fact that the IP owner is usually Goliath, and the farmer David certainly doesn't help the IP owner's case in the minds of the public.
So while I am in theory a fan of recognizing the effort that went into your onion, I find a lot of the repercussions of trying to protect your IP so distasteful I might not be willing to accept them.
Selective breeding is not patentable. Literally millennia of prior art. So instead build a brand based around a 10# onion, and protect the trademark rather than the biological variety. When customers demand "Bowling Bulb" branded 10# onions, produce managers will buy yours instead of the generic knockoff, or charge and pay extra for the onions with your logo stickered on them.
Or pull a dirty trick, such that there is an external factor to the onion growth, aside from the onion's own DNA, such as saturating the test and production plots with a chemical not normally required for onions, and breeding in dependence on supplementary fertilization, or breed in dependence on a specific pollinator. You have no choice but to sell the onion as is. You don't have to tell anyone else how to successfully grow it, or let them rent your species of onion-pollinating bee.
Totally untrue. New plant varieties can be patented regardless of how they are produced.
You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature.
It's kind of odd to scaremonger about organisms whose DNA is a result of transgenic modification but to be okay about those whose DNA is a result of modern industrial selective breeding.
Way to conflate advances in machinery, irrigation, botany, herbicides and fertilizers in the last century with selective breeding. Take those out and we would have famines now too.
Same thing as if an astronomer points a telescope to a patch of sky that has never been observed. Can they own exclusive rights to the image, and prevent others from pointing their telescopes to that same patch to make their own image? What if that astronomer spent 10 years looking at different galaxies and other astro objects, to find that one nebula that has artistic value?
OK. What if the researcher instead engages in genetic engineering and produces an onion that is gene-for-gene identitcal and indeed exhibits the behavior? Should that result be protectable?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-monsanto-lawsuit/kans...
No, because living organisms should not be patentable/protectable.
Today my answer to my younger self would be, "Because there are thousands of ant species and the company couldn't patent its discovery, so there is no incentive to conduct such expensive research"
But what they do with it afterwards is not your business.
Imagine if you spent the last ten years discovering pennicillin, and then, by virtue of not encumbering your discovery with patents, saved anywhere between 80 and 200 million lives.