Monsanto wins landmark patent case in Supreme Court
rt.com
rt.com
Most people who see this story play out seem to think that it implies a Monsanto seed could blow onto your field and then get you sued. But of course, if you didn't know you were planting Monsanto seeds, you wouldn't think to try to kill them with Roundup.
Apart from that, I can revel in my ignorance that tells me that collecting grain from a common silo and spraying it with roundup is not much more a big deal than going to a river and panning for gold, or passing a list through a filter.
Or even was growing yogurt, and intentionally subjecting his cultures to "too cold temps" in order to evolve strains that would grow at lower temps.
Roundup will kill all non-monsanto plants; they change the formula every year to make sure that you have to keep buying seeds. In this case, the farmer grabbed a ton of seeds, sprayed everything with roundup and kept only the seeds which survived; the seeds he knew to be from Monsanto.
I don't like the idea that Monsanto can go to your farm and throw seeds and suddenly you owe them money, but it seems like they might be in the right here. The farmer did go out of his way to pursue survivable seeds without paying Monsanto for the privilege.
This is different from Yogurt where you have some natural selection. He didn't introduce a chemical to the Yogurt with the intention of killing all non-chemically-protected strains.
I think that if cable companies broadcast encrypted signals in through my house, I should legally be able to decrypt them. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)
I think that if I find a scanner for cell phone conversations and find cell phone conversations that are unencrypted, I should legally be able to listen to them. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)
I think that if an Apple employee leaves an iPhone 6 in a bar, I should legally be able to break it apart. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.)
It might be ethically wrong for me to do so, but it should be legal for me to do so.
If Monsanto can't keep its products out of a community silo, and Farmer John wants to go fishing for their seeds by spraying them all with a commonly obtained chemical and seeing what survives, I think that should be legal too.
I didn't say "steal" anyone's phones.
And I didn't say it was ethical behavior.
But yes, I think if you lose your trade secrets, your product, whether it's a phone or whether it's the formula for Coca Cola, or KFC, then yes it's lost, and it's your fault.
"If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because man, they're gone"
I don't really see too many laws enacted to ensure the stuff I lose gets back to me, and so because of that I don't understand why there are laws to protect an enormous corporation's property in ways that my property is not protected.
If you can convince me my own personal property is protected in the same manner, I will be happy to change my mind.
It is illegal to take things that other people use and appropriate them for yourself. If someone finds your phone on the street, they need to try to return it.
I know this because I know this is what happened to Gawker.
It is illegal to take things that other people use and appropriate them for yourself. If someone finds your phone on the street, they need to try to return it.
I don't know this. That's what I've been saying. Can you point to laws that succinctly state that? Can you point to stories of law enforcement actually investigating such losses?
You might be right, but I've never encountered anyone saying that they lost something and the law helped them get it back. With the exception of money I've never encountered anything in any class growing up detailing what the citizen's duty was when finding a lost article. And even with money, it's pretty clear the responsibilities of the authorities differ from location to location and much of it is on the order of "turn it in, if no one comes for it within 30 days, it's yours".
Is there law that states that?
705.102 Reporting lost or abandoned property.— (1) Whenever any person finds any lost or abandoned property, such person shall report the description and location of the property to a law enforcement officer. ... (3) It is unlawful for any person who finds any lost or abandoned property to appropriate the same to his or her own use or to refuse to deliver the same when required. (4) Any person who unlawfully appropriates such lost or abandoned property to his or her own use or refuses to deliver such property when required commits theft as defined in s. 812.014, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.*
Similar laws are on the books in many US jurisdictions. It is actually quite common to bring police into these matters. (P.S. You might reasonably think of e.g. an envelope with one paycheck worth of money as the upper bound on property likely to be found abandoned, but a lot of the legal cases for this sort of thing involve cash hordes or doing things like abandoning e.g. a building or very valuable capital machinery.)
There's a locally famous case in my neck of Japan where a construction company, hired to break ground on a new building, discovered approximately $300,000 in cash buried in a tin can. It actually went before a magistrate, quite unusually for Japan, because it was very unclear who owned the money. The ruling was that the construction company received 25% (for having legal control of the work site) and the workers received 75% (for having actually found the money), while the land owner received 0%, because they had "no cognizable interest in property which they were unaware existed", and the (unknown) owner of the property had forfeited any interest in it by abandoning it in circumstances where they could not reasonably have precluded others from accessing it.
The court might have been smiling as it said that, particularly to the land owner, because the "Everybody knows it and nobody is saying it" conclusion was that the only reason somebody buries $300k and refuses to acknowledge it when it is unearthed is because the money is dirty. (The rumor was "untaxed proceeds of mob operations.")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost,_mislaid,_and_abandoned_pr...
"The rights of a finder of such property are determined in part by the status in which it is found. Because these classifications have developed under the ancient and often archaic common law of England, they turn on nuanced distinctions. The general rule attaching to the three types of property may be summarized as: A finder of property acquires no rights in mislaid property, is entitled to possession of lost property against everyone except the true owner, and is entitled to keep abandoned property.[1] This rule varies by jurisdiction"
At any rate, it basically seems to boil down to what I've said, which is that unless there is a specific law in your area stating otherwise, if you lose property, you lost it, and while it may be unethical to not report it, it's generally not illegal.
Should it be? In general I'd say no, because off the top of my head, it seems the costs outweigh the benefits. And then we come to how that impacts Monsanto.
I'd say if Monsanto can't keep it's seeds out of a silo, that's Monsanto's problem and not one that needs government intervention, which is likely to be massive and onerous to other interests. It's the nature of seeds.
No, I don't think that should be legal. Many places have data protection & privacy laws. If you get access to private information, you can't do what you want with it. I'm fine with that being the law and ethics.
I was born. I didn't sign any data protection & privacy law agreement. Things that I can witness and observe in the privacy of my own home should be none of yours or anyone else's business.
If that makes it hard for certain business models, I'm okay with that because the country is intended for the use of its citizens, not its corporations.
That is not how laws work. You consent is not required.
(Fun fact: There is some people who think that consent is required (and can be withdrawn) for laws to apply to them. It's called "freemen-on-the-land". It's like homeopathy but for laws. It's quite funny)
Broadcasting your radio signals unencrypted means there is no privacy. Making a law saying that it is private is like making a law the sun should come up at 5am. The sun will do what it wants and the communication will be overheard.
If you broadcast signals that are encrypted, but that I can intercept without any kind of physical tampering or alteration or destruction of the signal, again laws are of no help to anyone. The communication will be decrypted and overheard.
It's better to make laws that conform to reality than to make laws that tilt at windmills and are used arbitrarily against citizens.
The most salient points are on page 9-10:
"Still, Bowman has another seeds-are-special argument: that soybeans naturally “self-replicate or ‘sprout’ unless stored in a controlled manner,” and thus “it was the planted soybean, not Bowman” himself, that made replicas of Monsanto’s patented invention. Brief for Petitioner 42; see Tr. of Oral Arg. 14 (“[F]armers, when they plant seeds, they don’t exercise any control . . . over their crop” or “over the creative process”). But we think that blame-the-bean defense tough to credit. Bowman was not a passive observer of his soybeans’ multiplication; or put another way,the seeds he purchased (miraculous though they might be in other respects) did not spontaneously create eight successive soybean crops. As we have explained, supra at 2–3, Bowman devised and executed a novel way to harvest crops from Roundup Ready seeds without paying the usual premium. He purchased beans from a grain elevator anticipating that many would be Roundup Ready; applied a glyphosate-based herbicide in a way that culled any plants without the patented trait; and saved beans from the rest for the next season." (9)
"Our holding today is limited—addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a self replicating product. We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose." (10)
"We need not address here whether or how the doctrine of patent exhaustion would apply in such circumstances. In the case at hand, Bowman planted Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article." (10)
However, the passage of the Farmer Assurance Provision aka. "The Monsanto Protection Act" is a much more horrific legislative end-run around the will of the people.
I can see this point. Contracts should be honored.
However, the string "patent" occurs 96 times in the ruling in question. ("licens" occurs eight times.) It is difficult to credit that this was a case about licenses rather than one about patents.
I am aware though not fully acquainted with the concerns about "food security" in developing nations that led to the moratorium, but at least in developed nations, why favor the legal tactic of signing contracts that forbid replanting over the technological solution? They seem to accomplish the same end, after all. It also seems prudent, from an ecological perspective, to ensure that genetically modified plants cannot accidentally spread into the wild.
I cannot help but suspect at some level that the widespread fear of this technology is the result of successful scaremongering based on its unfortunate moniker ("terminator" or "suicide" seeds); it would be reassuring to learn of better reasons for the ban.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...
I get that we're all supposed to hate Monsanto because they're a corporation (something which they apparently don't have in common with the YC-backed companies), but what's the incentive to develop "superior" seeds if the first farmer who buys them can farm them and resell them at a lower cost until the end of time?
Maybe we need a different type of IP protection for this kind of thing: If you're able to independently reproduce this patented gene on your own then by all means utilize it, otherwise buy from us. But I find it hard to find the farmer wholly sympathetic on this whole thing.
And after all, this decision makes its harder to introduce those supposedly-evil GMOs in our American farms, so this should really be considered a victory, amirite?
Can you name any YC-backed companies whose products are widely suspected to be causing unprecedented harm to society (or at least have the potential to) but are getting increasing legal immunity? We also hate corporations that enforce patents in software because it's ridiculous to patent software - how about patenting genetic codes?
> We also hate corporations that enforce patents in software because it's ridiculous to patent software - how about patenting genetic codes?
Well, that's why I mentioned alternative IP regimes. I don't believe one should be able to patent a "natural fact" (such as my own genes), but I also don't feel that the skill and capital required to move genes from one cell to another in a manner which is still viable and ends up being more useful is completely immaterial.
For software programs we have copyright, not patent, to protect us. Let me be very clear, I'm a big fan of the GPL, and it requires a strong IP regime to work.
But I'm not sure that "copyright" would apply exactly to genetic code either, though maybe Monsanto could make that work. Pick your poison. :P
I just hope the sea level holds up long enough to retire to some tropical island.
Of course, IANAL and you should get one if it's important to be sure of that.
Monsanto is somewhat infamous for suing farmers for planting seeds from plants that were accidentally cross-pollinated with Monstanto crops. So to answer your question, you can't use non-Monsanto seeds if any of the farms around you are using Monsanto seeds.
Here is a [again, biased] citation about Monsanto suing people for saving seeds, allegedly going so far as to forge documents: http://nelsonfarm.net/issue.htm
Well, they can't buy such seeds at the elevator like they could 100 years ago. And now they can't plant elevator seeds period, without paying the Monsanto tax. (I know that isn't the explicit text of the ruling, but it is certainly its result for the most marketable crops.)
My grandpa's small family farm has been doing just fine without for decades, after all.
Yeah I'm sure his unicorn herd is thriving. If you actually have a family connection to agriculture, you know that outside a few sheltered crops like avocados, "family" farming has been steadily supplanted by corporate farming. I'm not against that per se, because competition, but my point was to impeach the oft-repeated lobbyists' saw that USDA is "for the farmers! [and their children!]"
what's the incentive to develop "superior" seeds if the first farmer who buys them can farm them and resell them at a lower cost until the end of time?
Monsanto already make a killing selling Roundup, to which these seeds are a completely complementary good. If Monsanto were good at business rather than evil at business, they would increase the price of Roundup and give the seeds away. (That would still be bad for both the environment and agriculture, but it wouldn't be as bad.)
this decision makes its harder to introduce those supposedly-evil GMOs in our American farms
News flash from the mid-90s: GMO crops are here already, in fact in many areas most farmers use them; that's why you can't avoid them at the elevator.
Your information is extremely dated. The patent for Roundup expired over a decade ago, and in the last 5 years the market has been flooded with cheap chinese made Glyphosate.
if roundup was readily copy-able, how could this be possible?
Gee asshole, it's almost like there's a fucking reason I said my grandpa's farm is small.
And it's not unicorns, it's horses, beef cattle and some heifers, and the hay required to feed them (and the alfalfa needed to restore the fields while they lie fallow).
> Monsanto already make a killing selling Roundup, to which these seeds are a completely complementary good. If Monsanto were good at business rather than evil at business, they would increase the price of Roundup and give the seeds away. (That would still be bad for both the environment and agriculture, but it wouldn't be as bad.)
That might apply to this case, but that doesn't answer the general question.
Let's say some Big Pharma spends $15 billion to develop a cure for acne by using genetic manipulation techniques, but the cure has to be delivered by a refitted retrovirus and the retrovirus can be "farmed" by anyone with an incubation lamp and a supply of eggs into however many doses are desired.
No side product here, just the acne "cure". How do you allow for development and marketing of that? What's your solution?
Patent is what we have for short-term protection. I don't think any of us want to broach into the realm of infinite-length copyright. Do you have a better idea?
No, they can't plant elevator seeds, spray them with Roundup, and then do the whole "aw shucks, looks like your seeds were the only ones that survived, who would've guessed?" routine when Monsanto comes a knocking.
Now this wasn't a great test-case since the defendant was trying to specifically rip Monsanto off, but it is my opinion that it is Monsanto's responsibility to ensure their protected product doesn't spread on its own.
I know that civil cases have an easier standard of proof but it would still have be difficult to prove every time that a farmer was trying to screw Monsanto over.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
[1]http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/terminator-seeds.asp... [2]http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/1999/oct/06/gm.food2
Now, I disagree with the decision, but only on ideological grounds. From a rights standpoint, this ruling won't really answer the question of the canadian farmer and wind-blown Monsanto seeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Hi-Bred
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer#Bayer_CropScience
(Call that a sampling, I didn't try to do an exhaustive search)
I realize this is an issue with the laws themselves and probably not within the purview of the Supreme Court, but I was kind of hoping they'd step in and end the madness.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto...
Those who concentrate on questions of narrow legality with respect to this organization are missing the forest for the trees. We have observed this system long enough to know what it does. The reason this system employs an army of lawyers and private investigators against the town of Pilot Grove (literally, the henchmen outnumber the population of the town!) is not because it seeks justice in fair proceedings. They kill the chicken to frighten the monkeys. It doesn't actually matter what a particular farmer has done when the Monsanto Man starts snooping around. The Beast must be fed, and until all American farmland is under the control of a single corporate operator that transfers all profits directly to Monsanto, the Beast will be on the hunt.
These beans wouldn't naturally exist if it weren't for Monsanto. It would be extremely difficult to produce a soy bean that didn't produce seeds... since that's the bean part.
This is very different from the Myriad BRCA1 patent where they patented a naturally occurring mutation in humans. In Monsanto's case, they actually produced something that was novel - an herbicide resistant soy bean.