Is this question what it seems? Can gardeners really get into patent trouble from planting a seed?
Long answer: The question is sparked by a recent court case where a farmer - named Bowman - purposefully used unlicensed technology on a commercial scale. If you are doing it by accident, or aren't doing it on a commercial scale, you're perfectly safe. (Some reporting in the popular press makes it sound like Bowman was unaware of his infringement or that it was an accident - a lot of people are freaking out at the idea of Monsanto suing a farmer because some patented seeds happened to be found on his property. If you read the court case, it becomes clear that nothing of the kind happened, and that if it had the case would have been thrown out.)
Really, it's just like every other bit of patented tech. If you're operating a factory pumping out unlicensed Rolex watches, you've got some potential legal liability. If you bought a fake watch in Bangkok, you don't. While I personally have some very serious qualms about the patents on GM crops, the current legal situation is, honestly, pretty sane. Hobbyists are perfectly safe, as are farmers acting in good faith (ie, they plant seeds believing them to be unpatented, or their seeds are contaminated by patented seeds blown across their property line). Activists like to construct scary hypotheticals, but the truth is rather more prosaic.
Like all other constraints of life in general, I think going lax on things like a separation of an ill corporation and the direct corollary effect it poses to something nature has originally derived is treading in unknown territory. The fact that this simple question would have been laughable at best 15 years ago showcases the downward spiral into everything being a legal matter in the not so distant future. You may think this is counterproductive activism but skim the history books. Look around you and reflect on the choices that others have made to put your in your first world situation. That can quickly change if there aren't people who keep those ideals in check and balance out the corporate tendencies that often times spins out of control when left to its own device. That is a path where morals take a back seat to suits and dollars more often than not.
I'm in your team wrt the practical implications of plant patents being overblown, but this example is not correct. Your watch will be confiscated by customs if they find it, and if you do it several times or are carrying a number of them sufficiently large to make it plausible that you're going to resell them (e.g., a number like '5'), you might be looking at administrative penalties and/or criminal prosecution.
> doing it on a commercial scale, you're perfectly safe.
Sigh. I wish people would stop repeating this. It's not true. If you infringe a patent "willfully" (i.e., you know about it, and have reason to believe it applies to you) you can be subject to triple damages. But you aren't safe just because you didn't know about the patent.
And doing something "non-commercially" means little. We all know that estimates of commercial harm can be manipulated-- looking at the damages that are routinely awarded in copyright infringement cases should be enough to convince you of that.
I doubt they'd go after a private gardener, but they could.
Further reading:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/Why-Does-Monsanto-Pa...
>"The first time growers purchase Monsanto seed, they sign a stewardship agreement and contract agreeing not to save and replant seeds produced from the crops they grow from Monsanto seed."
---
Even further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Legal_actions_and_con...
http://rense.com/general38/saver.htm
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/02/scotus-hears-...
The question is how far the licensing terms reach. The software companies support Monsanto's seed claims because they don't want people pirating software.
Which is why Monsanto and other companies tried to introduce "terminator seeds": plants who are sterile, so they a) guarantee more profits and b) the IP becomes easier to protect. The technology hasn't been introduced because protests were too large.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Terminator_seeds
However, in lands commonly plagued by famine, I could see the argument that terminator seeds would impose a serious security risk to the population. If for some reason the harvest fail, then the farmers is out of both money and seeds to survive for the next year. There would be nothing to fall back on. Terminator seeds would become de-facto time-bombs that are triggered during bad years, and I would understand a government depended on farming to outlaw such seed.
Correction: Below commenter is right that there might be legal issues in using the seeds even outside countries that has explicitly outlawed it. My fault for just reading the sources and not the whole Wikipedia section.
>Initially developed as a concept by the United States Department of Agriculture and multinational seed companies, Terminator seeds have not been commercialized anywhere in the world due to opposition from farmers, indigenous peoples, NGOs, and some governments. In 2000, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity recommended a de facto moratorium on field-testing and commercial sale of terminator seeds; the moratorium was re-affirmed in 2006. India and Brazil have passed national laws to prohibit the technology. [1]
How binding is a moratorium? I have no clue.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technol...
patent trolls & viruses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine
According to that page, it only applies to sales that were originally authorized. The way I read it, it means that is Ford licenses a patent for its buyers, the patent holder can't then go after buyers of used Fords, even though Ford may not have explicitly licensed used buyers. It does not, however, protect any Ford buyers, new or used, if Ford failed to license the patent at all.