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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

The only thing that got farmers sued by Monsanto was the planting of "Roundup-Ready" seeds and subsequent application of glyphosate to the crop, which would kill a non-Roundup-Ready crop. You could plant Monsanto's GM seeds all you wanted without legal risk, so long as you treated them like any other crop and didn't try to exploit their GM properties.

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> The only thing that got farmers sued by Monsanto

That is factually incorrect.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/06/01/dissecting-cla...

The licensing cases were world news.

This is a link that directly repeats the claim I just made, in more detail. Both elements are present in these cases: the planting of licensed seed, and the subsequent application of glyphosate to that crop. If you spray non-GM soybean crops with Roundup, you kill the crop.

> This is a link that directly repeats the claim I just made, in more detail.

This is a mischaracterization. The suit is not about the USE of glyphosate. The suit is about the replanting of the plants that survive it. Making it, effectively, a licensing issue. This is why I initially characterized it as such.

I didn't, and obviously wouldn't, say that Roundup-Ready seeds aren't license-encumbered. What I said was that you don't get in legal trouble unless you plant them and then spray them with Roundup --- in other words, you can't "accidentally" use the product, because to use it, you have to do something that would kill an ordinary crop.

Again, spraying with roundup is not the issue at the heart of the suit mentioned (he was using roundup BEFORE the GMO seeds were purchased by a neighbor). The issue is about planting without a license. The spraying of roundup was a step in the process used to trigger the licensing issue, after replanting what survived. He was never sued for using Roundup. Since you've reverted to downvoting and repeating yourself, you're wrong and are not interested in acknowledging it. GL with whatever.

1. I haven't downvoted you. In fact: I don't think I even can; you can't downvote responses to your own comments on HN.

2. The guidelines ask you not to complain about downvoting.

3. Your argument boils down to "that thing you said is true".

It's fine to just agree! We don't have to pretend to disagree just for the sake of appearances.

I must be reading the situation wrong. Would you mind describing how situations detailed in this article jibe with your account?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/agricultural-giant-battles-smal...

When you buy Monsanto seed you are licensed to use it under certain terms. One of those terms is not saving/harvesting the seeds and replanting them. Parr went to farmers, convinced them this was ok, and then charged them money to help them do it.

Monsanto did not sue Dave Runyon. The article says they threatened to sue. Therefore it's not a counterexample to GP's specific point.

Maybe you think Monsanto's conduct re: Dave Runyon makes them evil, maybe not. I don't -- how would one would run a GM seed business without threatening to sue left and right? (Or using terminator genes, which seem more evil.) I'd be interested to hear from anyone that shares my priors and disagrees with my conclusions.

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