PubPat Kills Four Key Monsanto Patents 436
IP Ergo Sum writes "PubPat's request for reexamination resulted in the rejection of four key Monsanto patents. According to PubPat, those particular patents were being used to 'harass, intimidate, sue — and in many cases bankrupt — American farmers.'"
be fruitful....... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Patents on life are STUPID. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
short-sighted (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Genetic engineering enables changes that would take multiple generations to create and then even more generations to attain wide-spread use to happen in the span of a single generation.
So if a particular inbred line of "walking udders" were to product deficient milk, the damage would be very localized before it was noticed and corrected. But a particular line of genetically engineered corn might make it into every box of breakfast cereal in the country for a couple of years running before people notice that it is shrinking the pensis of our youth.
Re:mirror request (Score:1, Interesting)
Which sounds logical to me:
1) use something that makes cattle gain weight (and make them gain it fast)
2) eat that cattle
3) get what you deserve.
Which is probably why meat from hormone-treated animals, as well as GM crops, are forbidden in Europe.
In turn that must be why we don't share your obesity epidemic (or at least it is much less pronounced here) - we eat hamburgers too, you know, but they don't seem to have the same effect on us as they do on you.
Funny: the human-test word for this post is "potbelly".
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:short-sighted (Score:3, Interesting)
I tend to think the patent system should be scrapped but I don't think we're at immediate risk of starving to death because of it.
Re:short-sighted (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, after the patents run out, it will be legal to keep the seeds of the former year for the next one - no wait, it won't, because the end of the patent protection doesn't mean that the license ends.
Also, terminator genes will be used to make it not only illegal but impossible. This way, everyone has to buy from them, or they aren't economically viable (as GM crops have higher yield and therefore are more cost effective - until the prices are raised because there isn't anything else anymore).
So, the GP is correct, though he may be understating the problems a bit.
"American" farmers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with patents is that they create monopolies. That makes them incredibly valuable. If you were forced to license your patent to competitors, you might focus more efforts on actually satisfying customers rather than suing for huge settlements.
Of course, this might put a lot of lawyers out of work.
Re:Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Toss out the entire patent if any claims are disallowed. The applicant can start over from scratch and refile. If disallowed a second time, do not permit the applicant to file on the patent or any variation of it ever again. This would encourage the applicant to be very conservative in what he claims.
2) Remove the exclusitivity part of the notion of patents. Everyone who independently invents the same thing could get their own patent with the right to use, manufacture, or sell licenses to the invention.
3) Before any patent lawsuit may proceed, reevaluate the patent for patentability with the same rigor as the original evaluation and invite the alleged infringer to provide comments and evidence. A patent owner could target more than one alleged infringer at the same time by inviting all of them to provide comments and evidence for the reevaluation of the patent.
4) Award damages for willfull infringements only. If not limited to willfill infringements, give the infringer a statuatory period of time of at least one year to stop using the patent.
5) Permit the patent office to require a working copy of any invention they do not believe has actually been built. If the applicant cannot provide a working copy, charge a $100,000 fee for wasting the patent office's time with nonsense inventions.
6) If there is a question of whether or not the patent provides enough detail to build the patent, choose a person of ordinary skill in the art to build the invention from the patent application. The applicant would pay for all fees and costs involved.
7) Encourage parties to any lawsuit or court action (not just patents) to use mediation by requiring the plaintiff to pay the attorneys fees for both sides. Only if the defendant refuses the mediation would he pay his own attorneys fees.
Re:Naaaah (Score:3, Interesting)
The technology to make GM crops sterile exists, but is not used [wikipedia.org].
It's like the ultimate DRM, except instead of not being able to listen to music you starve to death. Smart, eh?
Re:Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are the two current options for an inventor. The first is to keep the process secret, and try to sell enough product before it is reversed engineered. Such an approach not only wastes a societies resources by shifted creative power from new problems to problems that have already been solved, but provides little predictability for business.
The second option is the patent. Put the details of the product out in the public. Accept the protection of the government for 10 years. This gives a predictable interval in which to market the product. It also gives a predictable interval in which to improve the product so it can compete with any copies that might eventually be placed on the market. In exchange for such protection, other can use the ideas to develop new non-competing products immediately, and eventually develop copies of the product for wider consumption. This is a win/win for everyone as the inventor has time to exploit the product commercially, especially in today's mass produced market, and society is allowed to exploit the idea intellectually.
Here is why I disagree with protecting the little guy, or anyone for that matter. First, it is difficult to define. A patent may be granted to a little guy, who may grow into a big guy or sell to a big guy. Is the patent to depend on this? Second, such reasoning lends itself to extend the period of patents, and even copyright for that matter. I would argue that given the reduction in production times, the patent and copyright time should be reduced, or altered based on production dates. For instance a drug might take 5-10 years to enter mass production, and therefore might need a longer patent, but one can imagine all sorts of other products that might only require a five year patent. Likewise, it is inconceivable that Disney has not already exploited the derivitive characters fully, and those characters should be put back in the public domain.
By focusing on return on investment, rather than encouraging innovation in society, one gets into the situation where IP does in fact halt innovation, especially where a five year product cycle seems long.
Re:Naaaah (Score:5, Interesting)
Since these costs are fairly high, many producers are choosing to declare their crops GM. Overall effects: basically, you can not choose to grow non GM crops.
Re:Naaaah (Score:5, Interesting)
He also spent years in court losing lots of time and money.
Several people responded to you and your responders with no clue on this subject. Yes he was sued for have 90% contamination (numbers supplied by Monsanto testing) A round of testing by the University of Manitoba at the farmers request found that two of his fields had no contamination. Others had one percent, some had two percent and one had eight percent. In the ditch along the fields where we first noticed it, contamination was around 60 percent.
The GM crop is designed to resist being poisoned by roundup. He didn't use roundup so there was no benefit to him having the seeds. To the ignoramus that spouted "he had like 90% of course he was buying seed", well the RCIA says that disk you own is worth 150,000 they must be right, huh? It isn't in their interest to lie in their favor in the court is it?
Re:Naaaah (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you should re-read your post.
Maybe you were referring to some other GM-modification but Roundup Ready crops are engineered to be more resistant to Roundup herbicide, allowing it to be sprayed more heavily than would otherwise be the case. Roundup Ready is a classic example of monopoly-bundling leveraging one product to increase sales of another. Roundup is also a key ingredient on the massively successful *cough* "War on drugs" as it is purchased in quantity by the US Government for spraying on South American fields to destroy the Coca crops.
And if that didn't scare you enough, consider this. 13 states have already reported Glyphosate-resistance in weeds. How long do you think it will take for the Coca crops to become Glyphosate-resistant? Glyphosate has only been available for 30 years, so any resistance is a new phenomenon.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So if a particular inbred line of "walking udders" were to product deficient milk, the damage would be very localized before it was noticed and corrected. But a particular line of genetically engineered corn might make it into every box of breakfast cereal in the country for a couple of years running before people notice that it is shrinking the pensis of our youth.
The worst I've heard a GM food doing is triggering an allergic reaction, and one that wasn't particularly severe. This was the main "it's bad for you" example trotted out in an anti-GM video, so I doubt it gets much worse than that.
Anyone who's scared of GM food making their penis fall off, or having any adverse health effect on them, is simply ignorant of what the differences are between GM and non-GM food. There are good arguments that can be made against GM food, but most are to do with patents.
I've got the perfect solution...or 2 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:A great step, but only a small battle won.... (Score:3, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with a patent; it's a licensing issue. Farmers want to continue doing business in the "old ways" while reaping the benefits of new tech.
Actually, it's a combination of patent and licensing. And the issue has farmers around the world somewhat nervous. Google for "Monsanto Percy Schmeiser". Mr. Schmeiser claims (and such evidence as exists supports him) that he didn't buy Monsanto's GM canola seed; he had been breeding his own local varieties. But his neighbors grew Monsanto seed, and Roundup-resistant canola plants were found in his fields, so he was sued by Monsanto for patent infringement.
He has spent part of his time since then talking to people around the world about the issue. What scares people is that it's not possible to prevent cross pollination of most crops, so if your neighbor grows a crop that contains patented DNA, you can be sued into bankruptcy by a giant foreign-owned corporation. There's a serious threat that such corporations could end up owning much of the farmland in any country where DNA patents are upheld by local courts.
This is why, for example, a number of countries in Africa have stopped accepting any whole GM grains as food aid. They only accept ground grain, which can't be grown. If they allow GM grain into their country, it may alleviate current hunger problems, but the long-term cost will be foreign ownership of much of their farmland.
You may not take this seriously, but a lot of people around the world do.