Which part of 'modifying a natural organism and patenting that modification which then can spread through the normal means of natural replication is fundamentally wrong' is it that is giving you problems?
I know the patent is legit, I understand that such patents are common and that is exactly where I see the problem.
What the far reaching consequences are is beyond my grasp, all I see is a money grab by a very large company at the expense of those that do the hard work to feed us, and that they are concentrating on staple foods because getting a substantial royalty on staple foods puts the world at their feet.
See 'basmati' and a bunch of other stunts they've tried.
Here's the deal: farmers are under zero obligation to use genetically modified seeds. They are free to use traditional seeds. Why don't they do that, then? Because Monsanto's technology is a really, really good deal for them! It produces better yields at lower costs. It is not ridiculous to establish legal systems that protect the further development of such technologies and your small-farmer-versus-the-mega-corp Disney movie synopsis adds nothing to the conversation.
Truly, these institutions of capital and ~=SCIENCE=~ are more worthy of our aid than the starving, the poor, and the destitute humans across the world.
EDIT: Do you support software patents? All this seems to be doing is reprogramming a living organism, no?
Without Monsanto, the hardy seeds in this case wouldn't even exist. The patent here isn't just protecting Monsanto from poor destitute farmers (and suing farmers is a terrible PR move for Monsanto here). What it's really protecting Monsanto from the inevitable copycat company that would come along, buy a bag of Monsanto seeds, and cultivate them, undercutting Monsanto on price because they didn't have to put in any capital investment.
Be careful here--this is not an airtight statement. Many of the innovations are arguably simply correcting earlier innovations...mass insulin production is a great feat, but how much of that is used to fix diabetes caused by overconsumption of bad food? How much agriculture research is spent making poorly-processed food more palatable, or making crops resistant to synthetic pesticides?
A lot of innovation may simply be correcting problems that didn't exist before some other innovation happened.
They work in fields where scientific innovation is very expensive, and keep working because there is a potential return on their investment.
Perhaps we should find ways of driving the cost of innovation down? Like, say, loosening patent and licensing burdens to make equipment more easily attainable?
What it's really protecting Monsanto from the inevitable copycat company that would come along, buy a bag of Monsanto seeds, and cultivate them, undercutting Monsanto on price because they didn't have to put in any capital investment.
Agreed, but I do not see the necessary harm in this--again, having a strong brand and good distribution networks and quality products is how they can protect themselves against such a thing. In an optimized market, profit margins are indeed slim--and I suggest that for food production we want an optimized market.
A very small portion of R&D budgets go to patent licensing. At the end of the day, what's expensive is that hundreds of PhD's expect to make six figure salaries even if their work is benefitting mankind.
> Agreed, but I do not see the necessary harm in this--again, having a strong brand and good distribution networks and quality products is how they can protect themselves against such a thing
Well now you're trading one kind of IP (patents) for another (Trademark). And what if the other company that swoops in is Con Agra?
wow, this is a stretch. You realize that there is also Type I (juvenile) diabetes that is an auto-immune/genetic disorder that has nothing to do with unhealthy eating? GMO-produced human insulin (and subsequent engineered insulin analogs that are faster-acting) were major milestone for making that disease into a lifelong treatable condition. As someone with a father who is a juvenile diabetic now pushing into his 60s I'm pretty glad we're OK making capital investments in hard sciences.
It's fun an games when we laugh about the patent wars between Google/Samsung and Apple. But our food supply? I'll be the first to grab a torch and a pitchfork. Fark Monsanto.
EDIT: One could say that those pigs could be considered prior art... even so, you have a multibillion multinational company vs several small family farmers. Who's going to pay the lawyers to defend the family farmers... even to show prior "art"? What realm of delusion and craziness do we have to go to stop arguing about this?
EDIT 2: "patenting specific modifications" tries to imply patenting a process, and fails. "patenting certain DNA sequences" implies patenting the end result of a process.
EDIT 3: I don't have a problem with them having a patent on a particular process to generate the DNA sequences so long as the process reliably results in the organism having the desired DNA sequence. Otherwise the patent would be for a generic process to modify DNA sequences. These patents restrict the use of the methods but not the end results. Monsanto wants to charge and claim ownership of any organism that has the desired DNA sequences. Monsantos business model is flawed and the patent system should not be used to protect Monsantos revenue streams.
If Monsanto patented the process itself to create these dna sequences, the German farmers would not be infringing on their patent because they use completely different processes to produce the DNA: one is generated in a lab, the other is consummated in a sty.
If Monsanto found this strain of DNA and managed to reproduce it in a lab and developed a process of mass production, there is no reason they should not be able to profit from the endeavor. There is also no reason why they should be able to sue the farmers. The farmers aren't using their process for producing the dna sequences.
The fact that they could patent the sequences and sue the farmers speaks volumes about the broken state of patents. (As most everyone in tech already knew)
It would seem a patent on sequence only would be the patenting of information/expression alone which would fall under copyright rather than patent.
What do you think about changing civil suits like this (that someone has stolen someone else's "property") to require a criminal conviction first? What other ideas do you have for "fixing" this problem?
Given the extremity of the consequences and the enormity of the benefits that the biological sciences could provide us; it is worth questioning a regulatory regime that provides such painful distortions of society and that seems to act as much to prevent the benefits from being widespread as it does to allow the researchers to evade liability for the negative externalities.
Should chemists have not been allowed to patent the Haber Process? That is a chemical reaction. If chemical reactions are occuring all around us, isnt it disgusting to be able to patent it? No, because patenting a scientific process is a (the?) legitimate patent use case.
pull to refresh is a disgusting patent. Any of the patents mentioned recently by Samsung or Apple are disgusting. This isn't.
Whether you think that's a good thing or not is another story. Or maybe you think farmers should be able to save GMO seeds. I won't argue with you there, but the process of farming most definitely has changed, and it's not the same as it was thousands of years go.
But that's not what happened. Without Monsanto, the glyophosphate resistant seeds in question would not exist. The farmer in question was free to use regular old soybean seeds and get regular old soybeans. Nobody forced him to use Monsanto's seeds--he did so because he got a benefit from them, a benefit that was the result of Monsanto's invention and its investment in R&D.
So, we agree it seems.
Seeds -> procreation -> more seeds.
You missed the bit about splitting legal hairs. I know that lawyers love to do just that but this is food we're talking about, not words on paper.
[special seeds + special herbicide] -> procreation -> [special seeds + special herbicide]
Which would otherwise be:
seeds -> procreation -> more seeds.
It's not so black-and-white as this. You can typically buy excess seeds from the local grain elevator for replanting; these now contain an unseperable proportion of the descendants of Monsanto's seeds, so it's at least become lot harder not to use any of them.
In other cases (not this one), the farmer's field has been cross-contaminated from nearby fields of GMO soy, so they have been forced to use the descendants of Monsanto seed. Are these cases different? Why, in patent law? (Patent infringement does not require intent).
The environment that Monsanto are trying to create is one in which you must pay a royalty to Monsanto if your crop contains any of the descendants of their seeds, and where completely avoiding their seeds is impossible or at least very difficult (and imposes new costs).
It seems they've patented the result of a process, not the process itself. The seeds the farmer bought are patented.
The owner of the Haber Process patent has no say in what the ammonia gets used for after they have sold said ammonia. Nor should they.
However, if they did patent the organism itself, or the result of the process (as e40 said in a sibling comment), then I am against this type patent.
Personally, I think IP law should be small and narrowly defined. I think that patents are valid when it is a scientific (ie non-trivial) process that has a limited duration.
EDIT: After thinking about it, I think the distinction comes down to this: are they selling it? if so they have no ownership rights on the next generation of seeds. Are they licensing it? If so, yes they do have ownership of the next generation of seeds. In that case, they are licensing to you a manufacturing process where you are allowed to sell the output, but you do not own the process itself.
I like that distinction between selling and licensing. It clears things up a bit and also exposes the ridiculous/terrifying consequences of being able to license lifeforms.
We're certainly not far away from modification of humans, at least in small ways, so we better have it figured out by then. If you, through some patented process, gave your children some genes for disease resistance the legal framework in place for agriculture would have the preposterous effect of giving patent holders control over how they were allowed to reproduce. Bit of hyperbolic example surely, but still an instructive one IMO.
The only way that the people this directly affects can get on with their lives is by "splitting legal hairs". You can't just say "I disbelieve" and suddenly disempower all systems you disagree with.
Me: Judges, patent lawyers, regular lawyers.
You: farmers.
Monsanto claims those seeds are their intellectual property, when actually it is the process of modifying the seeds that they came up with. So they are claiming trespassing where in my view there is no such thing happening, they are claiming trespass on a public road.
Me: Judges, patent lawyers, regular lawyers.
You: farmers
Rayiner is right: that was a very flimsy argument. You should concede it instead of pretending you didn't make it.
The groups of people that I indicated that were splitting legal hairs over this can be divided into those that make a living splitting legal hairs and those that make a living plowing earth. If you feel that the latter are undeserving of protection against the former then fine, I concede. Personally I think that they should be allowed to get on with their lives without the IP battle being extended to their fields (pun intended).
It serves no purpose and I don't think that anything good can/will come of it, and potentially some very bad stuff may be the end result.
Feel free to disagree with that.
That was Rayiner's response to you and it seems self-evidently true. We strive towards a rule of law, not a rule of farmers, or a rule of philosopher kings who pick the meritorious occupations and penalize the rest.
Vernon Bowman didn't simply plant Roundup-Ready seeds by accident. He purchased clearly-marked Roundup-Ready seeds at commodity seed prices and then sprayed his fields with glyphosphate-based herbicides to take advantage of it. That isn't Monsanto's contention; Bowman admits to having done it. Maybe he's right and there's a patent exhaustion claim that makes doing that lawful, but it's hard to argue that Monsanto shouldn't have their day in court to verify it.
No, it's in fact very easy to argue that. And in case you failed to notice that was exactly my point. Farmers work their ground, they've been doing so for many thousands of years.
Intellectual property and farming should be mutually exclusive fields, anybody should be able to grow anything to the best of their ability without the fear of being sued. I know that you disagree with this, that you believe that it is A-ok for big company 'x' to sue farmer 'y' for violation of their intellectual property (assuming for the moment that such a thing exists) but I'd much prefer for things not to be like that. It's an opinion, you can disagree with it but you can't disallow me to have that opinion or 'force me to concede a point' in which I do not believe.
The rule of law should not extend to your ability to grow food from seeds, to royalties paid on such seeds or to any derivative thereof.
Incidentally, the rule of law's grip on the seed trade is centuries (millenia?) old. Agriculture is a very big part of the reason we have law to begin with.
Yes, so he would have planted some other seeds instead. Problem solved. See, farmers will pick that which gives them the best yield, not that which holds the nicest bit of IP, their decision processes don't work in terms of royalties or intellectual property. Farmers buy seeds, farmers plant seeds, farmers tend their crops, harvest and then - hopefully, but definitely not always - make a profit.
What seeds they buy is up to the farmer, and if there had been no sign saying 'roundup ready', price 'x' and if the farmer would have not used roundup he'd be just as guilty according to the law since the law revolves around the fact that the seeds were not legally obtained.
This is so patently ridiculous that I find it somewhat disconcerting to see you arguing that that is a desirable situation. If you BUY something, especially something as basic as a seed you should not have to go and research the chain of events that led to those seeds being offered for sale and whether they are unencumbered from a legal point of view.
It's ridiculous.
If he had planted "some other seeds" and then sprayed them with glyphosphates, he'd have ruined his crop. If he had planted Roundup-Ready seeds and not used Roundup, Monsanto probably wouldn't have cared. I've read a bunch of filings for different Roundup cases, and in every one of the ones I've found, it's alleged that the farmers in question not only planted Roundup-Ready seeds, but also used Roundup instead of conventional herbicides.
Yes, I know that. I was just trying to make you see that in the eye of the law that would not matter. The seeds are the problem, not the whole process, it all revolves around the seeds.
> If he had planted "some other seeds" and then sprayed them with glyphosphates, he'd have ruined his crop.
Indeed.
> If he had planted Roundup-Ready seeds and not used Roundup, Monsanto probably wouldn't have cared.
Who knows, but it isn't material whether Monsanto 'cares' or doesn't. After all they're claiming IP rights in the seeds, that's the only thing that matters and they could do so in either case. Of course they would be much less likely to bring suit in that case because it would somewhat reduce their chance of winning wouldn't you say?
> I've read a bunch of filings for different Roundup cases, and in every one of the ones I've found, it's alleged that the farmers in question not only planted Roundup-Ready seeds, but also used Roundup instead of conventional herbicides.
Indeed. And so we are left with a very simple case abstract:
Should a farmer be able to grow any seed that he/she buys on the open market?
I believe the answer to that question is 'yes'.
(i) Unsanctioned planting of Monsanto-lineage seeds
(ii) Use of glyphosphate herbicide on the resulting crop
BOTH elements are present in these cases. Not just one.
You don't see anything weird in that sentence?
What else are people going to do with seeds, other than plant them?
And use whatever herbicide works best with these seeds, it's only best practice after all.
Since when does anybody need permission from some company before they can put a seed in the ground?
What if there is a famine, would you allow that farmer to plant the seeds, or would you happily stand by while justice has its day and these evil seeds are destroyed so that Monsanto's legally granted rights are not infringed on?
Really, the world is turning into a stranger place every day that I live in it.
By all means, use whatever conventional herbicide works best on the resulting crops. Just don't spray them with the patented chemical that would kill any soybean that wasn't covered by Monsanto's patent.
The world hasn't been turned upside-down by novel applications of the law. It's been turned upside-down by massive investments in biotech that have enabled us to create magical crops that thrive despite being sprayed with extremely potent herbicides. Your argument here is an appeal to tradition and it's entirely misplaced.
They are right that usually each individual piece isn't a crime. But someone can perform 15 acts, each of which, in total isolation, would be legal, but end up in a significant illegal act. As that someone performs more and more of those acts, they move from legal behavior, to probably legal behavior, probably illegal behavior, to probably illegal behavior but with minuscule damages, to illegal behavior with serious damages.
I don't see that claim anywhere in the message you replied to. I see a claim that he believes that someone should be able to buy seeds and use whatever herbicides one wants with them without a risk of being sued for IP infringements.
That is not an argument about the moral standing of either farmers or lawyers, but an argument about where he believes one of the restrictions on patents should be drawn.
If Monsanto is wrong and they have no such legal right, that's fine. They'll lose in court, or at least they ought to. But you're making it seem like we should put a thumb on the scale in favor of farmers, just because they're farmers. Everyone takes advantage of the law when it serves their purposes. Indeed, a tremendous amount of law is traceable to serving the purposes of farmers (versus say hunters/gatherers). Indeed, even things we think of as modern instruments, like derivatives contracts, have their roots in farming.
I should note: I don't disagree that Monsanto shouldn't have a claim when farmers don't know their seeds have GMO DNA, either as a result of cross-pollination or not knowing the origins of the seeds. I think it's a weakness of the patent system that "intent" doesn't count for anything.
This might be one of my all-time favorite HN comments, because it's caused me to imagine how weird real property would look to the hunter-gatherer only used to personal property, and all the arguments they would use to make against the concept of real property.
One can see the hunter-gatherers gathered up around Hunter News long ago:
* Some farmer somewhere has decided that the crops he just left laying around are somehow his! Well, that makes no sense. If they were his, he should have kept them on his person! Everyone knows that! It's perfectly obvious that things you leave lying around belong to everyone and the next person who can pick it up gets to use it!
* They call it "real property" but it's not "property" -- you can't take it with you! Duh!
* Oh, sure, they try to say the ways it's like personal property, like the person who made it has a moral right to it, or that they wouldn't have built that house if they didn't get to keep it. Balderdash!
* Someone explain to me why you even need "real property" for society to function. It seems we didn't have it for thousands of years and everything worked okay!
* Did you know that under "real property" you can be excluded from certain land, just because someone else "says" it's theirs?
* What are they going to do, put a cop on every single piece of land to make sure no one trespasses? This will collapse under its own weight.
The interesting part is that most developed countries do still have structures in place to explicitly restrict the ability of landowners from preventing access to certain land. Either in the form of laws, or through public ownership.
E.g. in Norway there's a concept called "allemannsretten" ("public rights") that explicitly guarantee the right of the public to access "utmark" which is effectively any non-built-up part of land outside of urban cores. On top of that, there are special building restrictions on building near the coast line to ensure public access to beaches or the sea in general. Not only can you walk through any forest you please, no matter whether someone owns it, but you can gather berries or mushrooms there without obtaining permission. You do however generally need their permission to hunt.
In the US and elsewhere it is more commonly provided for through massive government ownership. E.g. federal land in the US makes up a massive 28% of the land mass. In the UK the Crown Estate owns more than half the coast, and massive amounts of other land, etc.
But while we've shifted substantially towards favouring private land owners, we still recognise that unfettered private property rights substantially restricts the freedom of movement of others.
Wrangling with the legal issues enforces consistency in our approach to the laws that govern our society. This approach is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that the base patent laws that are intended to promote innovation are extended logically in their interpretation.
Monsanto has spent incredible amounts of money and effort in pushing genetic engineering forward in order to create more food for the planet. Shutting them out from being able to profit from that effort would seem to be the only notion that is "ridiculous".
The exercise of coming up with a consistent legal approach in dealing with their claims is perfectly legitimate and noble.
I think you are misinterpreting Monsanto's mission to a frightening degree. Google posilac for instance.
Monsanto is good at PR, I knew that but that they're able to position themselves as the saviors of the planet is beyond what my cynical imagination could come up with.
You get to support that farmers are violating Monsanto's rights by replanting 2G seeds, or you get to claim that Monsanto has moved the world forward by making better plants for everyone--these claims are mutually exclusive if you are optimizing for "The most seeds and plants for everyone."
That isn't to say the current system precludes those people either (Earl Warren for example) because it is still a political process but it is more resistant.
That being said, I think that SCOTUS would be better served in cases of patents and sci/tech in general by using the process they currently use to handle important cases like the water disputes between Kansas and Nebraska being argued presently. SCOTUS appoints a special "master" to work on behalf of them to figure out the core issues and educate them. I could see someone like a Richard Posner being an excellent master for patent and SciTech internet related cases.