Comment by himinlomax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by himinlomax | Hacker News Reader

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I don't see how this idiotic EULA can be enforceable. A farmer buying seeds from Monsanto is one thing: it's a business deal, Monsanto (or their resellers) can tack such a restriction onto the deal and it's obviously enforceable -- to a point.

But for fruits sold in a grocery store ... even if the language in the one line "contract" turned out to be enforceable, which would completely retarded but could unfortunately happen, there's an obvious and immediate flaw. It's one line, so it evidently doesn't include any provision for a grocery buyer just gifting the seeds to a grower. Even if it did, what's the recourse? Get a homeless person to spit the seeds from the grapes he just bought in a cup. Who you gonna sue? How much is the patent holder going to get from a lice-infested, pee-smelling indigent? Why do they even bother putting that there?

Then there's patent exhaustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....

> Get a homeless person to spit the seeds from the grapes he just bought in a cup. Who you gonna sue? How much is the patent holder going to get from a lice-infested, pee-smelling indigent?

There's really no need for this, you could have made your point without being unpleasant toward those who have fallen upon hard times.

Also, they're seedless grapes. Planting them would be kind of pointless.

First, seedless grapes do occasionally have seeds.

Second, if they didn't, that would be entirely pointless.

Seed traces in seedless grapes are almost always unviable.

Us grape growers propagate these vines from clones. Breeders who work with seedless grapes have some horomonal techniques that can get a vine to produce some % of potentially viable seeds. Or one parent in the cross is a seeded variety and the seedless grape is just the pollen source.

Or micropropagation.

They have DNA.

Also a skilled botanist can turn it into a tissue culture and propagate it.

You don't need seeds to propagate grapes. Cuttings will almost always root. Or you can graft in an existing rootstock.

There won't be any viable dormant hardwood with buds on a cluster like this in the grocery store. You'd need to do tissue culture. Which involves labratory equipment, a pile of chemicals, and a totally sterile environment.

Maybe it’s harder for plants, but people do cell cultures at home and cultivate them into “fruits” all the time in mycology. Including plates, filtered laminar(ish) air flow and sterilization.

Dealing with plant cells seems a lot easier because you don’t have to conmpete with spores floating all around.

You could buy a certified clean room that’s inspected for $20k. Or build your own for a few hundred bucks.

Sure, but you could also probably just buy a licensed potted vine of this from a nursery for like $20. :-)

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