Supreme Court To Decide If Monsanto GMO Patents Are Valid 308
tomhath writes with this exerpt from a Reuters story: "The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an Indiana farmer's appeal that challenges the scope of Monsanto Co.'s patent rights on its Roundup Ready seeds. Mr. Bowman bought and planted 'commodity seeds' from a grain elevator. Those soybean seeds were a mix and included some that contained Monsanto's technology. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case over the objections of the Obama administration, which had urged the justices to leave the lower court rulings in place."
If you thought the utility monopolies were bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait for the food monopolies... oh wait, they're already here.
I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Monsanto is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
They contaminated his crops with their seed. They owe him compensation.
When GM labelling comes in in California, he will have to label his crop as GM contaminated, and that will reduce his profits. He did not seek that contamination, Monsanto were lax about cross contamination.
It may be true that he grew more as a result, but that does not mitigate the damage they did. How is he supposed to know that the seeds he buys and plants are contaminated with GM seeds? In effect they're burdening ever farmer with a requirement to detect their GM crop contamination, as necessary for the GM labeling requirements.
Monsanto polluted the seed pool, and others should not pay for their pollution.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that like blaming the copyright holder for not controlling distribution?
FWIW, I am on the side of the people/farmers on this. There are too many problems with this genetically modified seed for it to be allowed to continue. There is a farmer's tradition of process and of course there is nature. But on top of that, breeding plants which create their own insecticide? Isn't it ALREADY creating super-bugs?
I would like to read what the Obama administration has to say about it and to hear what Romney would have to say about the issue as well. Other candidates would be great to hear from also, but the electoral colleges will not vote for anyone but the approved candidates selected from one of two parties.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you in principle, but it's probably a much harder legal argument.
Hey would have to establish all the elements of the tort of negligence against Monsanto
1) That Monsanto owed him a duty of care
2) That Monsanto breached that duty of care
3) That that breach was the proximate cause of harm
4) That he suffered actual harm
1&2 would be pretty dicey to claim since Monsanto has no contractual relationship with him, nor were they involved in how his fields were contaminated. There's really no precedent for this kind of thing since there has never been IP that reproduced of it's own will...
The effect of him winning would pretty much destroy Monsanto's GMO business model though. Then everyone could just claim that their fields were "contaminated" and therefore dont have to pay royalties.
I'm glad that the supremes are hearing it though... this really needs to be established.
Not a legal question (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but in this case that doesn't matter.
Lots of people here will argue the merits one way or another, adding ever more subtle points to a cauldron of legal opinion that attempts to guess the outcome... ...and it doesn't matter one whit.
Regardless of the law, the lower court decision cannot be allowed to stand simply as a matter of practicality. If it does, Monsanto stands to control virtually all farmland in America and put all farmers out of business. Monsanto would find itself in the position of controlling all food prices and dictating whatever terms it likes in the manner of process and production.
The simplest solution is to rule that, absent any contractual obligations, the patent holder's rights are exhausted after first sale of self-reproducing physical objects. For anything beyond this, the rules of contract law would apply. Farmers would be bound by whatever contracts they enter into with Monsanto.
Monsanto's mistake was in freely allowing the sale of the harvested seed. A second-generation-seed purchaser is under no contractual obligation to Monsanto because they didn't enter into a contract. If Monsanto wants this to happen differently, then they need to word the original contract in such a way that this can't happen - so that the original purchaser can't sell seed for replanting, for instance.
Monsanto winning this would be really, *really* bad.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Care to reference URL for this claim? Would like to read about it.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that like blaming the copyright holder for not controlling distribution?
It's more like a record company breaking into your home and replacing half your CDs with their own, then demanding 100x the value of the CD from everyone that complained to the police about the break in.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a better analogy would be for the record company to write viruses that automatically rewrite all of your music files with illegal versions, and then suing you for owning and listening to illegal versions of your music.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Thomas should recuse himself (Score:4, Insightful)
Clarence Thomas used to work for Monsanto as an attorney in the 70s. I'm going to guess that a hypocrite won't really care about a little thing like conflict of interest.
It didn't stop him from ruling on the Affordable Care Act.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The research methods used in that article have been criticised by a lot of people. Not all published scientific articles are correct.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:1, Insightful)
And in light of this, we should ask again why anybody would be expected to vote for him... Oh yeah... something about lizards..
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are at least two other people on the ballot... Maybe we ought to give one of them a shot and see what happens. I doubt they could do much worse, but we'll never know if we don't try. Like the lottery, you can't win if you don't play.
Re:Thomas should recuse himself (Score:3, Insightful)
Ridiculous. By your logic, Kagan should recuse herself from any case where the federal government is a plaintiff. It didn't stop her from ruling on ACA. Take off your partisan blinders.
You. Was that a rhetorical question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it isn't about sexualising Santa Clause (who isn't part of a religion either, so double fail there).
But since you SAW it as such, this must mean you see EVERYTHING as religious.
Ergo proving you are the religious nutjob.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mitt Romney is willing to say and do ~anything~ to get elected. He has no principles. And based on the positions that he -has- taken, he wants a regressive tax system where the "job creators" (aka rich people) are taxed very little, and us non-rich (aka moochers) have to "pay our fair share". He has pandered to Israel and repeatedly shown during his trips overseas, that he has no understanding of foreign policy or affairs, and makes brash, off-the-cuff remarks that can be seen as aggressive and undisciplined.
This man is extremely dangerous not only for America, but for the entire world. Obama might not be any good, but Romney will destroy the American dream, and several other countries along with it.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, Monsanto is a horrible horrible company - but the cancer study stuff was flawed.
They should be brought down for patent shakedowns, but the cancer thing wasn't really proven conclusively in any fashion from that study.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:4, Insightful)
both the GMO strain and roundup itself cause cancer
Glyphosate (sold under several brand names, including "Roundup") has been used worldwide for quite some time. If it was a problem you'd have thought it would have been caught earlier.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:4, Insightful)
> 1) The fact that the control group contained 10 mice. That's right. 10 mice.
Thanks for listing some of the problems. In addition to all of your other points, there is the distinct possibility that the results were "cherry-picked" (having a small control group would make this easier). Since the researchers aren't releasing all of the data (including how many times they may have run this experiment before obtaining this particular result), there is no way we can evaluate whether this is at all interesting.
A lot of people don't understand that because science is, for the large part, a self-correcting system on large time scales, the peer review process is not actually designed to totally eliminate wrong research results from being published. In fact, one can make the analogy to the optimization algorithm of simulated annealing, where, while trying to optimize a function with many local minima, it is beneficial to sometimes progress in directions which make the result less optimal, so that overall the minimum attained is more likely to be the global one.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't trust studies if someone other than the person conducting them has the right to deny permission to report them.
Someone having the ability to selectively censor your experiments from being published has the power to bias the experiment by putting otherwise objective data through a subjective filter.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the Obama administration is as pro big money corporations as they can get away with. Anything that would limit the scope of patents would harm their corporate cronies ability to make money hand over fist. It's corruption, plain and simple.
Re:Why is the Obama administration objecting ? (Score:5, Insightful)
While it might hurt the predatory aspects of Monsanto's business model, a ruling that a patent holder explicitly permitting GMO seeds to be sold intermixed with other seeds as "commodity seeds" allows purchasers of the commodity seeds to use them in the way they were used here, it wouldn't destroy the food crop industry, or even the GMO food crop industry.
Re:I still think this guy should countersue . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, I think many of us are of the opinion that Monsanto doesn''t need or deserve legal help, but there is a need for patents/trademarks/copyrights, even if on a significantlymore limited scope than we see them today.