9 ms·
Potato farmers cry foul as PepsiCo sues them
- Causality1 8y agoThe concept of intellectual property should not apply to living things in any way, shape, or form. The fact it legally does is a moral travesty.
- post_break 8y agoJust to play devils advocate. What if you spent 10 years breeding an onion that always grows to 10lbs. You breed them over and over, using science and hard work and suddenly you have this superior thing that wouldn't exist without your work. Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse? I'm not relating this in any way to this lawsuit, just your general idea that intellectual property should not apply to a living thing.
- soperj 8y agoWhat if you spent 9 months making a baby, and then 20 years nurturing and feeding that baby. Suddenly you have this superior thing that wouldn't exist without your work. Clearly that result should be your intellectual property.
- xxpor 8y agoIMHO the only reason that hasn't been tried in court is because we can't clone humans from skin cells left in public. Once we can, I'm sure someone's going to try to make a Michael Phelps or Barry Bonds.
- EvanAnderson 8y ago"The Quail?" Joe spluttered. "He's about the most powerful man in the country. He's your enemy?" "Sort of. He can't have sex unless I allow it." Joe decided that big business was not among his aptitudes. "Years ago, the Quail received a gene augmentation that gave him enough charm to succeed despite his lack of intellect. Since I'm the one who invented his personality genes, I hold the copyright on his character. The Quail can't reproduce without my permission. Nor can he retransmit or rebroadcast his genes without the expressed, written consent of WonkaGen Inc." http://www.joelbenford.plus.com/teabowl/byauthor/wonka.htm http://www.joelbenford.plus.com/teabowl/byauthor/wonka.htm
- akgoel 8y agoPatent would run out in 20 years. But, that’s a novel way to use the justice system to screen spouses for your kids!
- chicob 8y agoThat argument is not very cogent because the idea of owning a person is too outrageous. But if you change it sligthly to owning copyright over some dog breed, that emotional objection would dissipate in my opinion. So if someone were to cross two or three breeds of dogs and make a stable, new breed, can that someone patent it and own it? What about every single pup that is eventually born? Can the breeder claim intellectual property rights over it? Of course this is nonsense, but some companies will try and are trying their luck.
- deogeo 8y agoSuppose you are then forbidden from growing this onion yourself, because in breeding it, you accidentally infringed on some of the many, many patents and protections on plant breeds?
- colechristensen 8y agoYou can't copyright clothing designs and fashion designers are still in business. > Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse? Yes. If you want to get paid to improve onions, get paid for work you will do not work you have done (research grants, onion growers associations, etc). Rent-seeking by owning living things' genetics is, I think, immoral. Rent-seeking, in general, that is patterns that allow you to do one-time work to get perpetual rights to future income is immoral when it passes a certain threshold.
- munk-a 8y agoAlso to tack onto this, when I was at my first job a PhD related the following story to me: When he was getting his doctorate his advisor was investigating several proteins that might do fun brain things and handed the specific testing of each off to a different doctoral candidate, one of those proteins ended up being super interesting and netting the candidate a good deal of clout and a foot in the door for high funded research - it was not his. So rent-seeking compensation for innovations will over-compensate the winners, but the losers who sunk just as much time into research will be deprived of any compensation.
- nradov 8y agoDo you think that a virus should count as a "living thing" in this context? Patents on genetics are term limited, not perpetual.
- colechristensen 8y agoIf it is being used or modified with regards to a wild virus doing virus things, yes. (no isolating and patenting a wild virus, vaccines, or research into wild virus and variations) If it is being used as a machine to edit genetics as a way to patent genes, then yes. If it is being used as a machine to do something less life related, maybe not.
- binarycrusader 8y agoYou can't copyright clothing designs and fashion designers are still in business. Actually, you can as of 2017, in a specific set of circumstances: In a 6–2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. in which it held that aspects of Varsity Brands Inc.’s cheerleading uniform designs are protectable under the U.S. Copyright Act. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-copyright-decision-when-clothing-work-art https://www.natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-copyright...
- munk-a 8y agoI feel like we in society can solve this without going to the lengths of patenting life forms - we could just instead make sure the people who did the inventing are properly rewarded using a softer good than currency and invest into general research - both of these things tend to benefit society quite a bit in the long run.
- terryschiavo22 8y agoThe implicit argument is that it takes 10 years to do this. Is that how it works in reality? If it was a month, no one would care.
- preinheimer 8y agoHonestly, being able to have some protection over that (though likely not for long) seems reasonable to me. The challenge (to me) comes down to all of the weird edge cases that come up when you try to actually implement that protection. - Keeping some portion of harvested product to plant next year is how we've farmed since we started farming. Is that now illegal? Does it require a licensing fee? - Some seeds blow in the wind, now the northern 10% of your neighbours plot has the fancy seed you paid for and they didn't. Are they "breaking the law"? What happens if they save some % of that seed for next year, is that doubly illegal? - If a consumer of the produce saves the seeds, then plants them in their own garden, are they breaking the law? These things all get really ugly really fast. The fact that the IP owner is usually Goliath, and the farmer David certainly doesn't help the IP owner's case in the minds of the public. So while I am in theory a fan of recognizing the effort that went into your onion, I find a lot of the repercussions of trying to protect your IP so distasteful I might not be willing to accept them.
- logfromblammo 8y agoIf you want to employ the cops to protect all your hard work, work on something that is patentable, copyrightable, or trademarkable. Selective breeding is not patentable. Literally millennia of prior art. So instead build a brand based around a 10# onion, and protect the trademark rather than the biological variety. When customers demand "Bowling Bulb" branded 10# onions, produce managers will buy yours instead of the generic knockoff, or charge and pay extra for the onions with your logo stickered on them. Or pull a dirty trick, such that there is an external factor to the onion growth, aside from the onion's own DNA, such as saturating the test and production plots with a chemical not normally required for onions, and breeding in dependence on supplementary fertilization, or breed in dependence on a specific pollinator. You have no choice but to sell the onion as is. You don't have to tell anyone else how to successfully grow it, or let them rent your species of onion-pollinating bee.
- Turing_Machine 7y ago> Selective breeding is not patentable. Literally millennia of prior art. Totally untrue. New plant varieties can be patented regardless of how they are produced.
- ASalazarMX 8y agoPatentable crops are a recent aberration, selective breeding has worked quite well without patents for millenniums.
- Turing_Machine 7y agoThroughout most of human history, most populations have faced famine at least one year out of ten, more often in marginal areas (the Israelites planned for one year out of seven, according to the Bible). Sorry, that is not "working quite well" by any reasonable definition. You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature.
- majewsky 7y agoMost of that is due to industrial-level selective breeding though. (The first commercial GMO was only released in 1994.) So GP's point still stands.
- dragonwriter 7y agoModern “Industrial level selective breeding” (which frequently uses a variety of mutagens to maximize the frequency and magnitude of genetic changes to select from) is distinguished from transgenics as a method of inducing genetic change largely by the fact that it's a lot less controlled as to what is going on beyond the targeted trait. It's kind of odd to scaremonger about organisms whose DNA is a result of transgenic modification but to be okay about those whose DNA is a result of modern industrial selective breeding.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago> You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature. Way to conflate advances in machinery, irrigation, botany, herbicides and fertilizers in the last century with selective breeding. Take those out and we would have famines now too.
- derekp7 8y agoThe thing is, if it is using traditional selection processes, then all the researcher is doing is discovering a naturally occuring set of genes that have a desired effect. This is no different than if someone randomly discovers a new lifeform in their yard, they can't claim exclusive rights over all descendants of that lifeform. The amount of work someone puts into it has no bearing on patentability. Same thing as if an astronomer points a telescope to a patch of sky that has never been observed. Can they own exclusive rights to the image, and prevent others from pointing their telescopes to that same patch to make their own image? What if that astronomer spent 10 years looking at different galaxies and other astro objects, to find that one nebula that has artistic value?
- Kalium 8y ago> The thing is, if it is using traditional selection processes, then all the researcher is doing is discovering a naturally occuring set of genes that have a desired effect. OK. What if the researcher instead engages in genetic engineering and produces an onion that is gene-for-gene identitcal and indeed exhibits the behavior? Should that result be protectable?
- miskin 8y agoWhat if bees transfer these genes to your field next to customer that bought those special seeds? Should you worry about using seeds from your field due to possible legal issues?
- rad_gruchalski 8y agoEven better - what if you actually do not want these modified crops. Who do you sue?
- NeuNeurosis 8y agoThis has already happened. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-monsanto-lawsuit/kansas-wheat-farmer-sues-monsanto-over-rogue-wheat-release-idUSBRE9530U320130604 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-monsanto-lawsuit/kans...
- chicob 8y agoSimply put, no one has the right to simply take your onions. They must pay you a fair price. But what they do with it afterwards is not your business.
- vkou 8y ago> Just to play devils advocate. What if you spent 10 years breeding an onion that always grows to 10lbs. You breed them over and over, using science and hard work and suddenly you have this superior thing that wouldn't exist without your work. Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse? Imagine if you spent the last ten years discovering pennicillin, and then, by virtue of not encumbering your discovery with patents, saved anywhere between 80 and 200 million lives.
- zaphar 8y agoYou might have the right to protect your specific process of breeding that variety of onion. But if you then sell the seeds to grow that onion you've sold the ability to grow that onion to another person. It's intrinsic to what an onion is. You could argue the only legal way to protect it would be to only sell the onion products and never the seeds or bulbs yourself.
- Causality1 8y agoYes. If you spend fifty years creating a new dog breed then slip up and sell an un-spayed pair of them, you have no claim to the resulting puppies.
- dclowd9901 8y agoSounds like you just made a great case for socialized farming research.
- NotSammyHagar 8y agoThis seems pretty horrible. Shades of monsanto suing farmers who had farms near monsanto seeded farms where the seeds escaped on their own.
- atdrummond 8y agoThe damages per farmer are ~210,000 USD, for those not familiar with the conversion.
- joombaga 8y agoAnd to put this in perspective, the average agricultural household makes Rs 107172 annually, or ~1526.26 USD. https://www.nabard.org/auth/writereaddata/tender/1608180417NABARD-Repo-16_Web_P.pdf https://www.nabard.org/auth/writereaddata/tender/1608180417N...
- rmbryan 8y agoThe heart of the article: "PepsiCo has invoked Section 64 of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Act, 2001 to claim infringement of its rights. However, farmers groups cite Section 39 of the same Act, which specifically says that a farmer is allowed “to save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a variety protected under this Act” so long as he does not sell “branded seed”.
- apta 8y agoMore abhorrent and parasitic behavior from companies and their lawyers, targeting the poor.
- ukwgz 8y agoTargeting the poor who are breaking the law and intending to profit from it. It's not like there are no other potato varieties in the world. In fact I'm sure regular potato seeds are cheaper than Lay potato seeds.
- AlexandrB 8y ago> It's not like there are no other potato varieties in the world. Patenting living organisms should not be allowed. It effectively gives a corporation veto power on the reproductive process of a plant or animal by making it illegal to allow that plant or animal to reproduce without permission. This flies in the face of basic biology, evolution, and agricultural practice.
- metalliqaz 8y agoamen
- chicob 8y agoEmphasis on poor, as in "poor enough not to stand a chance in court".
- newswriter99 8y agoTrying to copyright organic life is tricky because as Jurassic Park taught us, stuff tends to get out. So did the farmers "steal" the potatoes used for lays chips, or did they have no choice in their selection due to factors? Monsanto's sterile "terminator seeds" technology are a great example of this same issue.
- zaphar 8y agoThe article says that the farmers had either bought the seed from other farmers who had grown the crop before and held some seeds or that they had themselves held back seed from growing the crop. The case seems to revolve around whether they are allowed to do under Indian law.
- defterGoose 8y agoI often think (worry?) that this would be great material for a dystopian sci-fi novel. Something about a rogue strain of engineered DNA killing all the crops and leaving the world foodless. Kinda like the ice in Cat's Cradle.
- newswriter99 8y agoHow did I not hear about Cat's Cradle until just now. I burned through the top 100 sci-fi books (audiobook versions, but still) in 2015. Somehow this wasn't on the list.
- chicob 8y agoThis is the kind of bullshit that infuriates me as a farmer and the only reason for me not to use GMOs and whichever patented cultivars. The rights of farmers to resow has (and must have!) precedence over intellectual or property rights. These strategies have taken place in the past with GMOs, and I suspect will happen again. Branded seed sowing can be subject to some restrictions for a single contract and crop for the purpose of the destination of the produce, but the extent of those restrictions should stop there and should not apply to 2nd generation seeds or their crops. I've had my share of shady contracts with 10 year long confidentiality agreements. Never again. Indian farmers have all my sympathy and support.
- deogeo 8y ago> I've had my share of shady contracts with 10 year long confidentiality agreements. Never again. The plague of NDAs has moved to farming? Is there anything more you're allowed to say on the matter?
- chicob 8y agoIt was a seed multiplication contract. I'm pretty sure I cannot name the company or plant, or any other specifics. NDA's are useful for signing contracts with neighbouring farmers so that they cannot argue against differential treatment regarding prices. Of course everybody knows who is being paid what, but no one can officially complain.
- metalliqaz 8y ago> I'm pretty sure I cannot name the company So I'm assuming it's Monsanto, then
- chicob 8y agoI can say you are wrong, but I won't say anymore!
- 8y ago
- ohiovr 8y agoAnother injustice for farmers there. Over here Pepsi costs more than milk.
- kwoff 8y agoboycott these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo#Products_and_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo#Products_and_brands (if you care anything about your health, this is not even difficult)
- xbmcuser 8y agoThis is why I am mostly against gmo as this patenting of seeds etc to me is the worst thing for the world
- stringyham 8y agoWouldn't that be like being against the concept of vaccines because of horrible medical lobbies?
- muterad_murilax 8y agoAnyone knows if RMS still drinks Pepsi?