Can a legal mind please explain to us laypeople how $! billion (per plaintiff) in punitive damages doesn't belong on the other side of Alice's looking glass. Why not make it $1 Cajilion?
What punishment do you think would be appropriate?
If someone is stuck on the fact that the jury awarded a couple of people punitive damages, they're missing the forest for the trees.
Note well: That doesn't make it sane; it just makes it somewhat within the bounds of the law.
What's actually (probably) going to happen is that Bayer will appeal, and the damages will be massively reduced in the appeals court.
Monsanto made billions and billions and billions. They destroyed hundreds of farmers. They lied and cheated and obstructed when challenged. Then they sold their company to cash in on even more money.
You might say that Monsanto has existed in a world on the other side of Alice's looking glass. Bayer rewarded all of that with huge M&A money. This decision reaches into that world beyond the looking glass to bring the chickens home to roost.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
From my (admittedly limited) understanding, they would trespass on peoples farms and test their crops to see if they had any features similar to their GMO seed products (which could be present just due to the fact that your neighbors' farms use Monsanto seed, and pollen isn't exactly easy to control). According to the report cited in the article "Monsanto brought some 142 patent infringement suits against 410 farmers and 56 small businesses in more than 27 states." I'm sure some of that may be valid patent protection, but it's hard to defend yourself when a company as large as Monsanto decides it wants to challenge you in the legal system, and I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Monsanto really seemed to bring out ideological derangement among its critics.
Then one year, the neighbor down the road plants some super special patent-protected seeds and doesn't control pollination. Farmers crops get pollinated by neighbor due to no fault of farmer.
Farmer plants seeds next year and notices genetic differences. Farmer specifically selects for desirable genetic traits in determining which crops to allow to go to seed. Normal practice for 1000s of years. Only this time, Monsanto comes knocking.
Or alternatively, farmer sells excess seeds to seed repo. Normal practice for generations. Seed repo notes genetic differences. Some farmers notice that repo sells seeds which include many that have desirable trait. They increase purchases from such repos. Monsanto comes knocking.
Nobody stole anything. Nobody violated any license or contract. To exclude contaminated seeds from inventory would place significant burden on farmers and repos. So Monsanto can intentionally or unintentionally contaminate farms that don't use Monsanto, then very intentionally ruin their ability to harvest seed for future planting.
Farmers have to sell non-Monsanto seed for a discount to pay for screening and disposal of contaminate. Repos have to sell non-Monsanto seed for a premium to pay for screening and disposal of contaminate and insurance for legal liabilities if screening is imperfect.
Self-sustaining farming is effectively crushed. You cannot harvest your own seed, and non-Monsanto seed is more expensive to purchase because of legal threats. Voila! Monsanto becomes the single source for seed. Nobody is able to produce seed without their permission.
Of course, you could try to turn the tables and sue Monsanto if your crop is ever contaminated. Good luck with that.
Do you think it is wrong to spray Roundup on thistle in your lawn to protect the grass? Even if your grass exhibits traits probably influenced by your neighbor's grass?
Would it have somehow been ok if the farmers had hand-picked and uprooted each stem of less desirable product without using Roundup? If you are trying to select for Roundup resistance, why wouldn't you use Roundup in that selection process?
Monsanto could choose not to sell Roundup to these farmers. They could have quit spreading their pollination all over the countryside indiscriminately. Instead, Monsanto chose to sue farmers who had not stolen anything, not violated any contract. Imagine if Fukushima farmers were sued because their crops exhibited some desirable trait after the nuclear meltdown and they continued to select for that trait.
> Do you think it is wrong to spray Roundup on thistle in your lawn to protect the grass?
Yes, because that will KILL YOUR GRASS. So you only do it if you're stupid or trying a little patent-violating experiment in natural selection.
The farmer who sprayed Roundup on his field to concentrate the trace of patented genes in the soybeans wasn't doing it for any legitimate purpose. Doing that on a field without the contamination would not have worked! He was trying to evade patent protection and get access to the patented genes for free. The courts properly decided he was in the wrong.
You seem to think that because contamination occurred, patent protection was lost regardless of what the farmer does. But this is not the case. The behavior of the farmer here matters.
* don't plant
* plant, but don't harvest seed
* plant, harvest seed, test and remove any contaminant
* plant, harvest seed, take your chances
* plant, select for resistance using legally purchased chemicals
* plant, sue Monsanto for contamination
Imagine if some rogue scientist exposed me to some chemical that made all my offspring develop a patented ocular structure that produced better than 20/20 vision, and caused all their offspring to develop the same. Imagine that said scientist did so without my consent or knowledge.
Should the scientist win a lawsuit against me when my grandchildren exhibit the patented trait? Should my children be barred from reproducing?
Or does the scientist lose patent protection when they contaminate others? If I encourage my children to seek mates from a pool of others who were contaminated does that behavior matter?
Also, FWIW, an experiment to see if I have Roundup-resistant grass is not a patent-violating experiment. Anybody who so desires can run a protocol where they spray generations of crops with decreasingly diluted Roundup to select for resistance. This violates no patents. And I have in the past sacrificed portions of my lawn to eradicate a particularly noxious thistle. You may call this stupid, but my grass grew back very quickly and the thistle never returned.
Ask yourself: what exactly would Monsanto have gained by suing farmers for accidental contamination? It's not like they're going to make money off the lawsuit itself, and it would not be going to act as any kind of deterrent, if the farmer didn't deliberately do something else like spraying the field to concentrate the contamination.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/agricultural-giant-battles-smal...