Monsanto Wins Case Over Patented Canola 599
c writes "The Supreme Court of Canada says that you're liable if a plant with a patented gene infects your property. If you recall, Schmeiser claims (and research supports) that Roundup Ready canola seeds infected his own crops. Monsanto prosecuted him for patent infringement." Some other links: Monsanto's press release, Globe and Mail story.
Glad we're not the only ones! (Score:5, Insightful)
Monsanto originally pursued this case in the Federal Court of Canada because Mr. Schmeiser knowingly infringed Monsanto's patents on Roundup Ready technology by planting 1,030 acres of Roundup Ready canola without paying the required license fee for using the technology.
Ok, you say he purposely planted a strain of seed whose sole claim to fame is that Monsanto's herbicides don't kill it. But then:
However, the Supreme Court determined there was insufficient evidence that Mr. Schmeiser intentionally made use of the benefits provided by Monsanto's technology by spraying his crop with Roundup.
What? The guy planted this bastardized seed, supposedly on purpose, then didn't do the one thing that the seed is good for -- spraying with poison?
No wonder Monsanto sued. They're pi^h^h upset that he didn't buy the matching 55-gallon drums of Roundup. They couldn't have cared less if the guy used the patented seed -- they'd probably give it away for free if they could force the recipients to use their also-patented herbicide.
I'm waiting for someone to swipe some of these Frankenseeds and create Roundup-resistant dandelions. That'll teach 'em!
What can I patent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Monsanto lobbies to repeal of laws of nature? (Score:5, Insightful)
This really does seem to me to be a sticky issue...
It's impossible for a farmer to build a barrier to stop unwanted seeds from falling in. That's why they have to rely on weed-killing products and such to kill off what they didn't plant. Of course, the most common weed-killing product being RoundUp, and this being something designed to allow the canola to be ready for the use of RoundUp, that solution just plain isn't gonna work.
On the other hand, patents exist to allow companies to profit from their innovations. If Monsanto's patented genes are allowed to escape into the wild, then their monopoly privledge is lost and there goes any reason to create such innovations.
If anything, the burden should be placed on the farmers using the licensed seeds to control their plants so that they don't endup allowing seeds to go "into the wild".
This problem is only going to get worse before it gets better. There's a worse case that hasn't been encountered yet. If the consumer marketplace ends up with genetically modified apples that aren't intentionally seedless, then who knows where those apple seeds might wind up. If that modification turns up to be dominant, then non-modified apple trees are going to have a fight with the force of evolution.
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you recall... (Score:2, Insightful)
The courts, on the other hand, found that the appellants knew or ought to have known that they saved and planted seed containing the patented gene [umontreal.ca].
This "they contaminated my crops" claim is purely for the benefit of the media; he knew that he was planting Monsanto canola.
What total bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break.
Another case of protest first, think later... (Score:4, Insightful)
The should have been against this ruling. Effectively, this allows the marketers of genetically modified plants to not place any limits on where the seeds containing their genes go. If they naturally blow into another farmers farm and "infect" their crops, then future generations of their crops will by evolution inherit the modification.
Instead, they seem to be supporting the farmer on the "anything that costs Monsanto profits is good for us" strategy. That's just not right sometimes... any financial loss for Monsanto might slow down their research, but it's certainly not enough to stop the company. The goal should be smart regulation, not elimination...
Business Plan (Score:1, Insightful)
2) Get a patent
3) Toss it over your competitor's fence
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!!!!!!
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets say, I make a robot that makes an exact replica of itself from simple nuts and bolts. The way it makes a replica of itself is patented. One day that robot escapes and makes 100 copies of itself over at the local hardware store. Does that mean THEY are liable for my ineptness? I can sue them?
In my mind, it should be the other way around, the guy who had this patented crop end up on his land should be able to sue the patent holders for screwing up his property.
Re:Monsanto lobbies to repeal of laws of nature? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I think if a patented item can spread itself without the consent of the recipient, then they sure as hell can't be expected to pay for it.
Misleading headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of how you feel about this case, this guy wasn't caught with a few plants that had blown into his field. He was collecting the seeds from the patented plant and planting them himself.
Personally, I think (shudder) Monsanto deserved to win this case. The farmer was infringing on Monsanto's patent, and this case really is as simple as that.
Innocence Is No Defense! (Score:3, Insightful)
Although in the USA, the day may be closer than we think: we have the Great and Wonderful Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In response to DNA evidence that cleared a man on death row, he said that mere innocence is no grounds to overturn a judgement.
Re:Monsanto lobbies to repeal of laws of nature? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or we could declare that all plants and animals produced before 1985 are Natural (as though Noah had Holstein cows on the ark) and everything else is Frankenfood, from which we must recoil in terror. Outside of North America, that seems to be the case.
In fact, I'm not sure that caution isn't the right idea, but it's unfortunate that that view was reached out of pure superstition.
Re:If you recall... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a totally invalid defense against Monsanto's lawsuit. However, it'd be a very interesting claim to persue against the other farmers in the area who pay for Monsanto's patent license.
I'd like to see there be a ruling that says if you use genetically modified products that you have the responsiblity to preventing the seeds from leaving your property.
He should have gotten seeds from his property that didn't contain Monsanto's modification. The fact that he didn't means that he was poluted upon...
Re:Monsanto lobbies to repeal of laws of nature? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just not true. It's not **necessary** to have a monopoly to make a profit. Patents are only a limited-time monopoly anyway, and serve to ensure that innovations will (eventually) make their way into the public domain... Yes a monopoly helps, but it's entirely reasonable for a company to need to compete on things like price, quality, customer service, etc., in the absence of a monopoly. And the company that comes out with an innovation is still going to have "first to market" advantage, and possible "trade secret" status for their innovation. There would still be reasons to innovate even if there were no patents.
Truth be told, patents today have become more of a hindrance to business than anything. Especially smaller companies / solo inventors without the funding for armies of patent attorneys to research, file, and litigate over these things.
Human Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
While this does seem a little alarmist, it pays to consider the extremes of our laws and policies before those extremes are reached. It would be a great failing of our legistative and legal system if such a case ever even came close to actuality.
In other news (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, L Ron Fucking Hubbard, how can you ban the replication of a self-replicating device! I'm sorry but that is just plain asinine. Not all ventures in this world are profitable and if I have to wait a few more years for Government funded research to develop this these things, then it won't bother me a bit.
Sick and twisted (Score:4, Insightful)
Rape victim sued. (Score:3, Insightful)
Canadian Supreme court upholds $25,000,000 against rape victim for patent infringement.
Jane Doe was raped on May 12, 2021 by Andrew Luster, VI. This rape caused Doe to become Pregnant with Luster's child. Since Luster was generically enhanced, and the enhancement was patented, this caused the Doe baby and the process used by Doe to create this child to infringe on Luster's patent.
The court was not convinced that Luster was himself liable for the patent violation or gave consent to the use of the license since the genetic material was obtained by rape and not by a mutually consented transfer.
The court did note that Luster was convicted and served 3 years for the rape and considered that sufficient payment for his negligence in the case.
Re:What total bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens when some of it spills on the way to market? Since it doesn't look any different than regular corn, gets grown by him next year, totally by accident. It breeds with other, normal corn, and the gene spreads. Will he get sued by Monsanto for patent infringement because he spilled some corn kernels that happened to breed with regular corn? This case allows for a precedent.
Yes, I realize that this guy has been found to have intentionally planted it, but don't think for a second that Monsanto wouldn't be pushing us down the slippery slope towards a world where every seed has to be picked up off of a field lest they lose profits.
Patenting things that can copy themselves is lunacy.
Re:If you recall... (Score:5, Insightful)
He was not, then, planting Monsanto's canola. He was planting HIS canola. That the Monsanto engineered plants were still viable was not his fault, it was theirs. Arguably, he is not infringing their patents because he either A: has already payed to get the engineered seed, or B: it was non-engineered seed that was polinated by Engineered stock - which is not his fault.
If Monsanto can't keep a lid on their genetic engineering projects, that's their problem. And, if the Greens are to be believed, everyone elses "problem" too.
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:2, Insightful)
Still, if everybody switched and we became reliant upon a crop that could not produce viable seeds... Well, that's a frightening idea. Imagine if we lived through the coming water wars only to find all our seeds are sterilized monsanto seeds, and of course there's no such thing as roundup in the post-apocalyptic dystopia
Re:Just a little factoid that may make a differenc (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents gives one the right to reproduce something. When the object that is patented reproduces itself on MY land, then the resulting product is MINE. That simple. You have NEVER needed a license to USE a patented product. Don't let companies convice you that one does. Copyright people have already come close to convincing the US that you need a license to use software.
The goal of the plant is to grow and reproduce. When it does that, the patented object is doing EXACTLY what the company intened it to do and hence no patent protection should be violated. That simple.
Re:If you recall... (Score:5, Insightful)
At least, that's his story. I don't know if it's true or not, but I don't know what the courts could have found that would prove it false....it seems like a perfectly reasonable explaination to me. My first thought when I see an interesting plant isn't, "oh, lookie here...this is neat...must be some kind of patented genes in there..."
Besides, you forget the fact that during this ruling, they decided he didn't use their resistance to his competitive advantage (hence the $0 damages), so why would he have knowingly planted them if he wasn't going to take advantage of the thing that makes them worth planting?
Let the lawsuits begin (Score:5, Insightful)
btw, if some of you think the next logical step is that Monsanto buys both farmers land and start their own company farm, think again, because in a lot of places in Canada (Saskatchewan in particular where the origional case happened), it is illegal for corperations to own farms.
It would not surprise me that the issues raised by this case become so severe, that the Supreme court eventuially overrules its own decision just to restore sanity to the legal system. Here is just a partial list of issues that are raised by this decision.
Do laws and legal precidents dealing with damage caused by livestock extend to patened plants?
Is the "I didn't know" defence become legitimate if it takes a highly trained expert and millions of dollars of equipment to determine if the plant has been pateneded or not?
What happenes if a natural plant is found with the same gene sequence?
what if someone cross breeds a plant with the same gene sequence?
Who is responsible when cross polination occurs in the wild? The owner of the nearest source of the patened plants, or the company who created the seed for not ensuring that is can reproduce normally?
What I can see hapening is that we will get more and more of these restricive IP laws and court cases untill people start complaning too loudly for the clueless politicians to ignore. The poly will then say, "but its out of our hands because its international law and trade restrictions will be placed on us unless we comply." A few years after that, some country will decide that the IP regeme is worse then any ammount of sanctions and change their IP laws to something sane. Shortly after that most other countries will fallow suit.
Re:Patent infringement upheld, but damages elimina (Score:3, Insightful)
This almost sounds like a situation the anti-anything-Monsanto-does forces dreamed up because if they won they would have created another source of "major brand of weedkiller ready" seed that would have zeroed out the worth of the Roundup Ready Canola product's patent instantly. If they lost, oh well, at least they financial damage to them is matched by Monsanto because they each had to pay their own legal fees.
Better yet, this situation made Monsanto file the lawsuit to protect their patent, making them look like agressive plantiffs when really they were just bated into a setup where they had to file...
Great! (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe, they can even sue the states or the federal government for laying down the roads that permit such illegal distribution (inter-state, even [gasp!]) of improperly obtained genetically modified food substances.
That dripping sound you hear is lawyer drool.
Read the G&M article... (Score:5, Insightful)
He has steadfastly insisted that the seed somehow blew onto his fields from passing trucks or from neighbouring farms...
He said he was astonished to discover that a great deal of the canola in those areas survived his spraying, suggesting that had somehow acquired a resistance to the herbicide. He used portions of the seed from those areas for his crop the following year."
He claims it blew off a truck (kind of like buying a DVD player that "fell off the truck"). Second, he took the seeds from the plants, which was miraculously resistent to Round Up, and then resowed his field with it the next year. 95% of his 1000 or so acres were found to contain this Monsato-frankenstein-canola.
Not quite as simple as Monsato finding a few plants in one field, and sueing him. He probalby woudln't have been guilty at the end of the first year, but the second year, when he re-used the seed, he was.
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an even bigger problem. Now farmers can't set aside part of their crop for the next season's planting, and instead have to go back to Monsanto (or whomever) to buy more seed each year. Suppose Monsanto has a superior variety of wheat that grabs a big portion of the world market (which is what they're trying to do, after all). Then you have a big chunk of the world's food supply depending on one company and the relatively few seed farms that it operates. Even if the company has the best of intentions, any major problems -- disease, pests, natural disasters, terrorism -- on a small number of seed farms could then have huge repercussions worldwide.
Re:Monsanto lobbies to repeal of laws of nature? (Score:2, Insightful)
I know,I know, it's just a crazy dream.
KFG
Easy way for AgriBusiness to kill competitors... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just throw a few seeds or spread a few spores or spray a special coat of some patented genes on some of your competitor's fields (surreptitiously of course, maybe hire someone else to do it); and they'll lose all their crops.
After all, you can't be sure where all the cross pollenation occured, so you'll have to wipe out the entire crop and burn the field to be sure it's gone. While AgriBusiness could afford to fight this, after all they own hundreds of different fields and could lose a crop or two in the name of competition, small/independent farmers would stand no chance.
Re:Glad we're not the only ones! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you're assuming that the trait already exists somewhere in the population so that it can be selected. Otherwise, you might as well select dandelions on their ability to speak French...
Re:Supposed to be sterile? (Score:5, Insightful)
seems to me that you should be allowed to take the seed from your own non GM crops and re-plant next year. If your crops are aquiring DNA from neigboring GM crops then it seem difficult to call falt on behalf of the farmer.
youd think that the seed companies would have a real desire to keep these things sterile... otherwise other people will start to do this to develop their own private strains of GM crops... you cant sue them all... but I suppose you could try
for what its worth, my confusion about the source of the seeds came from this quote in the article:
"Schmeiser argued the canola seed blew onto his property from a nearby farm. He has said the plants "polluted" his fields."
assuming of course that he isnt simply lying.
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not much different than a rapist getting a victim pregnant, then sue her for carrying his child/getting an abortion/etc if you think about it
An innocent victim infected by something he/she had no control over, then getting reprimanded for it. Personally, I think Monsanto should be the one getting in trouble over this, as it's their product that is getting out of control.
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agraculterual life: GM food - Reproduces and propogates. It's legal to infect others and illegale to become infected.
Big problem here. If the same rules applied to computer life as GM food then I could copywrite a virus and charge my victims... er, customers who become infected. I'd be rich beyond my wildest dreams. This needs to be fixed.
TW
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A temporary setback... (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the government follows what people want. This only occurs when there is a large enough public outcry, but I really don't see how a blip like this would affect things. Instead, they will fall back on the default of promoting the 'rights' of those who are funnelling money to them. While the NDP and Green Party would side with the farmer, they have little power federally (and for the green party, little power anywhere). I don't expect the Liberals or the Conservatives to change patent laws in such a way that would stop this, and I wouldn't trust either in general on IP-related issues.
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Roundup-resistant dandelions. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What Organic means to food (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently you think people who care about honesty are "utter boobs".
Re:OK, smartass (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no global food shortage. There are regional and individual food shortages which are exacerbated by politics. The problem isn't that there's no enough food, the problem is that we can't get the food to the people who need it.
Re:So, it spreads itself... (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm thats has nothing to do with GM foods or organic foods, much like how today's roses have lost their fragerence after years of cross breading, today's tomato's have been breed to be physically beautiful sacrificing taste because at grocery store, regular people don't get tomato's on taste but whether not they are round,red and not bruised.
Re:Supposed to be sterile? (Score:2, Insightful)
According to Monsanto's own research, viable cross-pollination to other species is rare.
Seed dispersal is howevr another story. Canola seeds are tiny. Depending on their genetics, they could spread a long way. Kilometers, especially in open, dry prairie. The act of harvesting itself is known to move these tiny seeds around by several hundred meters.
Naturally, such seeds will have a selective advantage in their new site and inevitibly will spread.
As for sterility, its hard to economically produce a crop just for seed (so called S1 generations) that then produce dead seeds. They tried it but I think the market blew them off.
It will come down to stats. Im no expert at agriculture but some function of normal canola seed dispersion, distances, time, prevailing winds, rainfall and a few other bits and pieces should be enough to see if the accused farmer has a hotspot on his land worthy of further study.
However, in a world where downpours of frogs from far-off waterspouts is not unknown, I would think the farmer is probably in good shape. Monsanto produced a more successful organism. In time it will dominate. Thats what *happens*.
Of course all this would be moot if the world would for once get a grip and realise GM crops are a waste of time. Monsanto and their ilk shame us into condoning them by using picture of starving children. The fact is that we easily make enough food for everyone as it is, it's just a question of having the political will to move it to where its needed.
Re:Supposed to be sterile? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is inherently unethical to create a reproducing lifeform which is patented. Regardless of whether Schmeiser's claim that your seeds polluted his farm is truthful, you simply cannot do this without showing an ignorance of common sense, lack of comprehension for the laws of nature, and a general business ineptitude.
"Give a man a key, he cannot not open the door; give him something free and he'll resell it to the poor" -NOFX
But, assuming for a minute that your crop does not and will not ever spread:
Your crop is visibly very distinguishable from the normal crop in all stages of growth, correct?
And you make products cheaply and widely available that paralyze your crop without harming any other life form?
If not, how do you expect anybody to handle your product?
If I give you two glasses, one with wine and the other with strychnine, and they are indistinguishable, am I being fair to you?
Sincerely,
Matthew C. Williams
Re:Supposed to be sterile? (Score:3, Insightful)
That way any farmer with an "infected" field could till it under, not violate Monsanto's license, and then sue for Monsanto for the lost crop.