14 ms·

EULA Found on a Package of Fruit

296 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
I'm curious if they have a plant patent on this variety, it wouldn't be valid outside the USA and given that it's also written in French I assume they sell outside the USA. I think this text is probably meant to protect the IP outside the USA mostly if they have a plant patent, seems like an interesting legal strategy. I've also had these grapes and never noticed the text, I wonder if it is new, and yes these grapes taste amazing! They are super sweet, and a slightly different almost artificial seeming flavor.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Cotton candy grapes are definitely patented. They've got another 10 years of patent life left IIRC
  - nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
    Thanks
ethbr0 6y ago
For those unaware, the new wave of apple varieties (juice, not space gray) are also IP-encumbered [0]. The Honeycrisp's patent seems to have expired, but varieties that you will need permission to grow: Ambrosia, Cosmic Crisp, Envy, Jazz, Kanzi, SweeTango. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/11/10/358530280/want-to-grow-these-apples-youll-have-to-join-the-club https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/11/10/358530280/wa...
- thotsBgone 6y ago
  This whole thing seems perfectly reasonable to me. The analogy between DNA code and computer code seems pretty direct. They made the code, they should get the rights to the software/fruit. Don't like it? Write/selectively breed your own fruit.
  - itisit 6y ago
    You wouldn’t download an apple pie, would you?
  - pixl97 6y ago
    How about no. I would rather have companies not make new breeds because of fear of theft than deal with lawsuits/enforcement of growing food.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      To take this to the obvious parallel of software patents, patents get a lot of (deserved) criticism these days, but they exist for a reason, ans serve a purpose which I think is arguably still valid. Excessive patent length and patenting trivial things is bad. So is people stealing the hard work of others. There is a sane middle ground we should be shooting for, not wiping patents out entirely to the detriment of most (arguably all, in the long run).
      - nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
        Incidentally these types of plant patents AND software patents are the two categories that are patentable in the USA but not in most of the rest of the world, so they definitely straddle the line of patentability.
        swimfar 6y ago
        Do you have a source for that? It looks like there are plant patents in the EU. https://www.mewburn.com/law-practice-library/plant-variety-rights-and-patents-for-plant-related-inventions https://www.mewburn.com/law-practice-library/plant-variety-r... https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/node/285 https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/node/285
    - gruez 6y ago
      > than deal with lawsuits/enforcement of growing food. Is there a reason why food should be treated differently than any other manufacturing process, which is also patentable? Or are you against patents in general?
- pixl97 6y ago
  The only way to grow any apple is to take a cutting off the tree. Apple seeds don't grow what you expect.
  - lisper 6y ago
    > Apple seeds don't grow what you expect. Would you mind elaborating on that a bit?
    - grawprog 6y ago
      Wild apples tend to be small and rather tart or bitter. Commercial varieties are not grown from seed but rather from cuttings from a mother tree somewhere. Planting Apple seeds results in apples resembling wild apples and not the cultivated variety the seeds come from. This is because https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple >Many apples grow readily from seeds. However, more than with most perennial fruits, apples must be propagated asexually to obtain the sweetness and other desirable characteristics of the parent. This is because seedling apples are an example of "extreme heterozygotes", in that rather than inheriting genes from their parents to create a new apple with parental characteristics, they are instead significantly different from their parents, perhaps to compete with the many pests.[51] Triploid cultivars have an additional reproductive barrier in that 3 sets of chromosomes cannot be divided evenly during meiosis, yielding unequal segregation of the chromosomes (aneuploids). Even in the case when a triploid plant can produce a seed (apples are an example), it occurs infrequently, and seedlings rarely survive.[52] >Apples do not breed true when planted as seeds, although cuttings can take root and breed true, and may live for a century, grafting is usually used. The rootstock used for the bottom of the graft can be selected to produce trees of a large variety of sizes, as well as changing the winter hardiness, insect and disease resistance, and soil preference of the resulting tree.
      - vikramkr 6y ago
        To clarify, the reason you are likely ending up with a wild apple phenotype is not because that is intrinsic to the nature of apples. Otherwise, new varieties could never be developed. Crabapples are used as pollinators for farmed apples since apples aren't self fertile, and you'll end up with a hybrid. If you've got the space and the time (in this case a lot of time), breeding is a great hobby for anyone. Another factor is that apples from seed take a lot longer to fruit, and as you mentioned, you can really control the growth characteristics of the tree with the rootstock. Unlike mangoes, the rootstock can result in the same scion variety of apple growing into a 50 foot tree or a 5 foot shrub- thats a huge amount of control!
- wincy 6y ago
  Oh interesting, apparently Honeycrisp could have been a trademark, which would have allowed them to sell them indefinitely under that name excluding others from doing so, but apparently that got messed up because the name Honeycrisp was included in the patent name. https://www.duetsblog.com/2018/09/articles/articles/if-only-honeycrisp-were-a-trademark-for-apples/ https://www.duetsblog.com/2018/09/articles/articles/if-only-...
- maxerickson 6y ago
  A bummer with apples is that climate seems to matter. Wisconsin Honeycrisp are lame. There's something they do to ruin varieties. I think it's either that or picking them green and gassing them for sale.
- eps 6y ago
  SweeTango is really quite there on the edge of a freaky mutant fruit. They often have oddly shaped and deformed seed cavities, opening up into the flesh in some weird ways. Many would have parts of flesh that look transparent and saturated in juice. They are tasty, but it's in-your-face obvious they aren't naturally evolved.
Zenst 6y ago
Imagine if they had clauses like this back in the time of Johnny Appleseed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed
- haroldegibbons 6y ago
  Johnny: Hello, Troll? Bridge Troll: <grunt> Johnny: Troll, could you jailbreak these Waalgarten apples for me? Bridge Troll: <scratches head> Bridge Troll: <smashes Waalgarten apples> Bridge Troll sloughs three Waalgarten apple seeds and a human toe in your general direction. Johnny: Hmmm, maybe I'll just buy them at Waalgarten. Dr Waalgarten: Hold it right there! Are those Waalgarten brand apples? Johnny: I, uh... Johnny points. Johnny: Oh, no! The red coats! Dr Waalgarten: What!? Wher... Johnny kicks Dr Waalgarten in the shins and runs away.
scollet 6y ago
Internet of Fruit
DiabloD3 6y ago
I don't think this is a EULA in the typical sense: its a GMO licensing agreement.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Cotton candy grapes aren't bioengineered - this is referring to a plant patent which protects the grape variety.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    I think you mean they are engineered but are not GMO.
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      Bioengineered means a specific thing in this context. I dont like using the term "genetically modified" because, well, everything is genetically modified, thats how agriculture works. Bioengineering narrows down what's being discussed to genetic modifications using synthetic biology tools from the field of bioengineering. Even more specific would be to say they aren't transgenic plants. Were getting to the weird point now where you can use synthetic biological tools like crisper to change the DNA sequence of a plant, but because you aren't introducing a new genetic sequence, the resulting plant isn't considered a "GMO" because the legal definition is more concerned about transgenic sequences than the use of bioengineering tools. These are all just really vague and highly politicized terms.
hilbert42 6y ago
Unfortunately, that's not new. In recent years, I've seen those 'EULA'- patent-like warnings on many a fresh produce packaging. How did it happen? Well it's very simple really. As with DRM, copyrights and patents the average member of the public couldn't give a damn about them, so only those with financial vested interests hold enough sway with politicians to have laws altered. This isn't my idea, I picked the idea up from 'Mr Copyright' (Cory Doctorow) who wrote about such matters a while back.
dheera 6y ago
Buy 100 bags of these grapes, feed them to some animals, and set them free? I'd love to see those animals read and "agree" to a EULA.
- pkaye 6y ago
  I don't think the seeds will produce the same kind of fruits. I think its like apples in that you have to clone a cutting to get consistent quality.
  - wmoxam 6y ago
    Exactly. Every seed would result in a different tasting grape. Some of the plants grown from seed would be susceptible to phylloxera too. A better method would be to try to get the stem to grow. Basically dip the cut end in a rooting hormone and plant it.
- homero 6y ago
  Monsanto has sued farmers who had plants that grew from seeds that flew from a neighbor
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    No, they sued a farmer who concentrated glyphosate resistant traces in his soybeans by spraying his field with that herbicide. Had he not done that, Monsanto would have done nothing (and likely could have done nothing). The courts properly recognized the farmers conduct as willful patent infringement.
    - 8note 6y ago
      If it weren't for the neighbors having the patented seeds I imagine they'd also have no legs to stand on?
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        You mean, Monsanto? No. Monsanto's patents were valid regardless of how the farmer got those seeds. The action of willfully concentrating the resistance genes is what got him in trouble.
mijoharas 6y ago
So... Anyone know if this is likely to hold up in court? It sounds absurd, but IANAL. The other thing that I keep thinking about is resale. How does that tie in?
- sombremesa 6y ago
  Maybe. There are GMO patents. As written it is a bit too broad since it does not allow the consumer to synthesize anything in their bodies that coincides with what's in the fruit.
  - nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
    In the USA there are also "plant patents" which like software patents aren't recognized in most countries. It doesn't require it to be GMO, just to have undergone certain types of selection and breeding and be registered in the right way. GMO patents are usually done via standard utility patents, the plant patent is actually a third category separate from design or utility patents.
- Alex3917 6y ago
  > Anyone know if this is likely to hold up in court? It would already be illegal to grow clones of the plant anyway, at least for commercial use, so whether or not the EULA is binding is kind of irrelevant.
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  The grapes are under patent, it's not the eula that's making it illegal its the patent. See Monsanto and it's trademarked seeds https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-patents-sue-farmers-547/ https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-patents-sue-farmers-547/
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Trademark != patent
- united893 6y ago
vadym909 6y ago
Really sweet grapes that kids love avbl at Costco Mountain View. I can imagine why they don't want it copied.
rbecker 6y ago
Related: After the invasion of Iraq, the US occupying force issued 100 orders as to how the new state is to be run. Among them is order 81, which prohibits saving and planting of patented seeds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders
whyenot 6y ago
These are cotton candy grapes. They are a horticultural variety that was produced through traditional breeding practices to increase the sugar content, reduce tartness, and add the hint of vanilla flavor. Those all come from traditional crossing of other genetic lines of grapes. The process was more difficult because cotton candy grapes are seedless, so each generation had to be propagated using tissue culture.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Don’t they usually just keep the parent strains a secret and create hybrid seeds?
  - wmoxam 6y ago
    No, not for grapes
- WatchDog 6y ago
  How do they selectively breed seedless plants? Wont plants propagated via tissue have the same DNA?
  - markdown 6y ago
    Yup, I don't understand this. Vegetative propagation is cloning.
  - whyenot 6y ago
    No, because the part of the plant that is being tissue cultured is the immature embryo. After pollination, the flowers of seedless grapes still produce an embryo, but the embryo stops developing when it is very small, and there is no fully formed seed (a process called stenospermocarpy). To grow the offspring of a cross, breeders have to dissect the immature fruit (the flower's ovary) and remove the immature embryo. The embryo is then transferred to tissue culture media where it is grown into a plant with roots and leaves that can eventually be transferred to soil.
    - 6y ago
vikramkr 6y ago
Other than the part about reproducing from seeds, this is a pretty standard plant patent situation in the US. There are all sorts of restrictions on what you can patent, and the plant patent landscape is quite reasonable (unlike software patents). Plants like the cotton candy grapes in this post are really difficult to develop, and 20 years of legal protection is pretty reasonable. Remember this is agriculture- things move relatively slowly, and you cant corner the market of a variety in 20 years - you probably won't have patent protection by the time a plant reaches max market penetrstion anyway, but you'll have made your money during the first few years. And if you purchase patented varieties of fruit for your home garden (you might already have a couple!) you'll notice the patent fee for them barely registers - shipping costs are probably higher than the patent cost for your new citrus. As I was alluding to though, there are restrictions, including that the plant has to be asexually reproduced and the infringing plant has to be identical to the parent, which does not apply to seed born progeny. Maybe there's some aspect of the plant variety protection act in play - I'm not as familiar with that - or maybe they're referring to using tissue from the aborted seeds present in seedless grapes to tissue culture out a clone, IDK.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Not to mention plants are much harder to clone at scale, since the parent strains can be kept secret which effectively prevents seed propagation. It’s easy to clone one for personal use, but to scale it out for commercial sale is much, much harder (depending on the type of fruit).
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    Propagating by cutting is the norm for many (most?) varieties of fruits.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  I don't like plant patents like this as they are infringing on natural rights of people that have been around since the invention of agriculture. I grew potatoes in my garden after some store-bought ones developed eyes. It never crossed my mind to check if they were patented first, and it's absurd that I'd have to. The monopolization of everything is insane. We're binding ourselves up tighter and tighter in paper.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I was curious about the legality of this, and the USPTO has a very detailed overview on plant patents: https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/types-patent-applications/general-information-about-35-usc-161 https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/... . I.e., this isn't a "EULA", it's just really a description of the patent rules that cover these Cotton Candy Grapes. I thought it particularly interesting that for some reason "tubers" are called out specifically as not being provided patent protection.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Thats because plant patents cover varieties that won't really propagated themselves asexually naturally (or won't come true from seed). Tubers will keep propagating by themselves - you cant call out someone for infringing a patent on a potato if you miss one when harvesting and it makes more of itself. Although there's always grey area - plant reproduction is complicated! Tubers and seeds are however covered under plant variety protection, but that's a different legal code than patents.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  Why incur the cost of printing this on the package? It’s a trivial expense. But agricultural margins aren’t that wide.
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    Marketing perhaps? Maybe they think the notice makes the product seem exclusive and so high quality that it needs special government protection because everyone is dying to reproduce it.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    Because some goof lawyer suggested it and the marginal cost of adding the text was ~0. A patent like that is a ticket to huge margins as far as agriculture is concerned. It makes sense that people would err on the side of protecting it.
mdtancsa 6y ago
I love the little trolling at the end with the stem in a glass of water! Cue, "Fight the Power"
- tubetime 6y ago
  sadly it doesn't seem to be sprouting roots. oh well.
sushicalculus 6y ago
There's a documentary on Netflix called Food, Inc. that goes into Monsanto's vendetta against farmers, suing them for intellectual property theft if their GMO seeds blow into their fields from a neighbors field. The entire documentary made me very sad because I could not think of any solution
- vikramkr 6y ago
  While GMO regulation is a tough issue, this post has nothing to do with GMOs - the grapes in the post are under a standard plant patent and are non bioengineered.
- gruez 6y ago
  >There's a documentary on Netflix called Food, Inc. that goes into Monsanto's vendetta against farmers, suing them for intellectual property theft if their GMO seeds blow into their fields from a neighbors field. AFAIK that's not an accurate depiction of what monsanto has been doing. According to wikipedia[1] monsanto says they won't "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means". I'm not sure what the exact that was discussed in the documentary, but the ones mentioned in the wikipedia article all have elements of the farmer doing something intentionally, eg. >The case began in 2007, when Monsanto sued Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman who in 1999 bought seed for his second planting from a grain elevator – the same elevator to which he and others sold their transgenic crops.[17] The elevator sold the soybeans as commodities, not as seeds for planting.[17][18] Bowman tested the new seeds, and found that ,as he had expected, some were resistant to glyphosate. He intentionally replanted his harvest of GM seeds in subsequent years, supplementing them with more soybeans he bought at the elevator. [...] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_plaintiff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_plaint...
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > According to wikipedia[1] monsanto says they won't "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means". Well that's telling, in that they still claim to have the right to shut down such a farmer.
ggm 6y ago
I wonder if you could drive this to generic by widespread disobeying behaviour? Thermos became generic because they lost control. Asprin because of war reparations. Hoover was a proper name. Deliberately jonny-appleseeding the living bejesus out of these grapes could make it next to impossible to say who dun it, from memory Grape Genome is quite plastic. (I am not advocating this. I am asking if the patent would fall if you could demonstrate it existed in sustaining forms in the wild, widespread)
- vikramkr 6y ago
  So the question you ask in parenthesis is different from the question you ask int he first paragraph. If you prove the plant existed widespread in the wild before the patent holder tried to apply for the patent, then yes, the plant is not patentable. Furthermore, if the variety is not reproduced asexually, then it is not patentable. This is basically plant prior art. You cant patent air conditioners because they already exist. However, if you do what you mentioned in the first paragraph and go and propagated a ton of plants and make them widespread after the fact, then no you haven't invalidated the patent. You just infringed on it even more and probably have to pay a bigger fine. In general, you don't get to escape the legal consequences of an action by doing the action even more times. That just makes the consequences worse.
  - myself248 6y ago
    Here's how I interpreted GP's question: Suppose I drop a ton of these seeds all over the place. Some land in your backyard. Some of those take root. The next year, you notice some volunteer grapes growing on your fence, taste one, and decide it's pretty good. If you give some to your friend so they can plant the seeds, are you culpable? If you sell some, are you culpable?
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      If its propagated by seeds its not patentable - so I don't think it's possible for that sort of scenario to rise. If you asexually propagated a plant and let a neighbor take a cutting, then I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer, but that situation sounds similar to the what happens if you unknowingly buy stolen art and try to auction it type question. It would probably be a very interesting legal battle at the least - and the original propagator would probably be liable, but that's definitely an interesting scenario. I doubt the end result is going to be that the patent owner just loses protection.
quixoticelixer- 6y ago
This isn't 'new' at all.
cmckn 6y ago
Mostly off topic, but cotton candy grapes are super delicious.
tipoftheiceberg 6y ago
https://ifg.world/ https://ifg.world/ >See ‘Grapes’ For anyone interested in the breeders behind these (delicious) grapes. Side note: I am very excited to see this thread alive.. I remember seeing it on New with 1 upvote thinking it wouldn't make the front page.
mherdeg 6y ago
The label on the packaging reminds me of Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man", dystopian near-future sf about what could happen if all the viable seeds were patented ( http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/WINDUP-STORIES.htm http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/WINDUP-STORIES.h... ).
vaccinator 6y ago
I have seen something similar on a blueberry plant I purchased.
lucioperca 6y ago
I once read similar warning on a raspberry shroud I bought. It warned me not do cutting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(plant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(plant)). I did not know of this technique, but now I know. So I do not know if these warnings are effective or get the idea across to people that you can do these things.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  The Streisand Effect in action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
jrockway 6y ago
It seems this is just marketing text dressed up as a EULA: "oh, these grapes are so neat they need a legal disclaimer!" The underlying law that protects the patent seems to exist whether or not you are informed of it, so there is probably no need to put the text on the packaging. If you scroll down on Twitter, I have to say that the "joy" emoji with a picture of the stem in a glass of water is hilarious, however. (Reminds me of the time I bought an Intel processor, which came with an Intel sticker. The sticker came with a warning that it was not to be applied to anything not containing an Intel processor. It is now applied to my Nintendo Switch. All I can say is that I'm glad corporate lawyers are expensive, or we'd all be in Sticker Jail by now.)
Puts 6y ago
I think this article was posted here a while back: https://qz.com/africa/1900035/the-lie-of-monsantos-genetically-modified-cotton-in-burkina-faso/ https://qz.com/africa/1900035/the-lie-of-monsantos-genetical... It's ironic how GMO has been sold as the solution to poverty and starvation and then in reality it's just been used to prevent poor farmers from reusing seeds by slightly changing and copyrighting them. Yay for humanity!
- mschuster91 6y ago
  And you'll get downvoted pretty hard on HN and Reddit for being opposed to GMOs based on the extortion potential... well, it's "refreshing" to see that the fears are not baseless but reality.
  - TomSwirly 6y ago
    Corporations are people, and cuddly people too! What could go wrong in giving them ownership of our food sources? /sarcasm /despair-for-humanity
- bluGill 6y ago
  Many GMO seeds are off patent now (in the last couple years the most important/useful patents have expired). Also several GMO seeds like Golden rice were carefully never patented to make it easier for poor to use them - and the poor still cannot get/use those seeds even though they are better. No sane farmer saves seeds. Hybrids seeds yield much better than saved seeds, so it is worth the cost to buy new seeds every year. Obviously this depends on the crop - not everything can be hybrid successfully.
bipson 6y ago
A colleague of mine has a small farm which he inherited and operates as part-time-business. He once wanted to sell some surplus seeds from a harvest to other farmers on a facebook page or similar. He was quickly reminded that he was strictly not allowed to this, since he did not own the rights. The cooperative he operates under (basically the only way farming is done here) sold/gave him the seeds and the right to plant them and resell/bring the crops to them afterwards. Everything else was "unlicensed" and would be fined harshly. That's just the way it is - particularly with newly developed variants. Breeding takes decades and needs to pay off somehow. For a different view on this I suggest the SciFri podcast on the new "Cosmic Crisp" Apple. Or some research on the "Honey Crisp", "Pink Lady", etc.
bArray 6y ago
I've seen similar on products in the UK for muli-pack chocolate bars. They have something like "Mutlipack. This may not be used for individual sale" or something like this. It seems pretty crazy they are allowed to do this, you would think that once you have purchased the food item you are allowed to do with it as you wish (within reason).
- jstanley 6y ago
  You can sell them separately though, those words are just words, they aren't any kind of contract. It's just a deterrent to stop shops from selling them separately because some customers might question it and then assume the shop is up to something dodgy.
- gbronner 6y ago
  That's common. Often the individual items don't have the correct labeling to be legal for sale.
  - mnw21cam 6y ago
    They are usually missing things like the nutrition information, which will be on the enclosing multi-pack.
znpy 6y ago
Are these patents even enforceable? If I planted seeds from those grapes, could anyone come after me?
thelastname 6y ago
That's why I'm against GMO.

296 points by sohkamyung 6y ago

I'm curious if they have a plant patent on this variety, it wouldn't be valid outside the USA and given that it's also written in French I assume they sell outside the USA. I think this text is probably meant to protect the IP outside the USA mostly if they have a plant patent, seems like an interesting legal strategy. I've also had these grapes and never noticed the text, I wonder if it is new, and yes these grapes taste amazing! They are super sweet, and a slightly different almost artificial seeming flavor.

vikramkr 6y ago
Cotton candy grapes are definitely patented. They've got another 10 years of patent life left IIRC
- nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
  Thanks

ethbr0 6y ago

For those unaware, the new wave of apple varieties (juice, not space gray) are also IP-encumbered [0]. The Honeycrisp's patent seems to have expired, but varieties that you will need permission to grow: Ambrosia, Cosmic Crisp, Envy, Jazz, Kanzi, SweeTango. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/11/10/358530280/want-to-grow-these-apples-youll-have-to-join-the-club https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/11/10/358530280/wa...

thotsBgone 6y ago
This whole thing seems perfectly reasonable to me. The analogy between DNA code and computer code seems pretty direct. They made the code, they should get the rights to the software/fruit. Don't like it? Write/selectively breed your own fruit.
- itisit 6y ago
  You wouldn’t download an apple pie, would you?
- pixl97 6y ago
  How about no. I would rather have companies not make new breeds because of fear of theft than deal with lawsuits/enforcement of growing food.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    To take this to the obvious parallel of software patents, patents get a lot of (deserved) criticism these days, but they exist for a reason, ans serve a purpose which I think is arguably still valid. Excessive patent length and patenting trivial things is bad. So is people stealing the hard work of others. There is a sane middle ground we should be shooting for, not wiping patents out entirely to the detriment of most (arguably all, in the long run).
    - nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
      Incidentally these types of plant patents AND software patents are the two categories that are patentable in the USA but not in most of the rest of the world, so they definitely straddle the line of patentability.
      - swimfar 6y ago
        Do you have a source for that? It looks like there are plant patents in the EU. https://www.mewburn.com/law-practice-library/plant-variety-rights-and-patents-for-plant-related-inventions https://www.mewburn.com/law-practice-library/plant-variety-r... https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/node/285 https://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/node/285
  - gruez 6y ago
    > than deal with lawsuits/enforcement of growing food. Is there a reason why food should be treated differently than any other manufacturing process, which is also patentable? Or are you against patents in general?
pixl97 6y ago
The only way to grow any apple is to take a cutting off the tree. Apple seeds don't grow what you expect.
- lisper 6y ago
  > Apple seeds don't grow what you expect. Would you mind elaborating on that a bit?
  - grawprog 6y ago
    Wild apples tend to be small and rather tart or bitter. Commercial varieties are not grown from seed but rather from cuttings from a mother tree somewhere. Planting Apple seeds results in apples resembling wild apples and not the cultivated variety the seeds come from. This is because https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple >Many apples grow readily from seeds. However, more than with most perennial fruits, apples must be propagated asexually to obtain the sweetness and other desirable characteristics of the parent. This is because seedling apples are an example of "extreme heterozygotes", in that rather than inheriting genes from their parents to create a new apple with parental characteristics, they are instead significantly different from their parents, perhaps to compete with the many pests.[51] Triploid cultivars have an additional reproductive barrier in that 3 sets of chromosomes cannot be divided evenly during meiosis, yielding unequal segregation of the chromosomes (aneuploids). Even in the case when a triploid plant can produce a seed (apples are an example), it occurs infrequently, and seedlings rarely survive.[52] >Apples do not breed true when planted as seeds, although cuttings can take root and breed true, and may live for a century, grafting is usually used. The rootstock used for the bottom of the graft can be selected to produce trees of a large variety of sizes, as well as changing the winter hardiness, insect and disease resistance, and soil preference of the resulting tree.
    - vikramkr 6y ago
      To clarify, the reason you are likely ending up with a wild apple phenotype is not because that is intrinsic to the nature of apples. Otherwise, new varieties could never be developed. Crabapples are used as pollinators for farmed apples since apples aren't self fertile, and you'll end up with a hybrid. If you've got the space and the time (in this case a lot of time), breeding is a great hobby for anyone. Another factor is that apples from seed take a lot longer to fruit, and as you mentioned, you can really control the growth characteristics of the tree with the rootstock. Unlike mangoes, the rootstock can result in the same scion variety of apple growing into a 50 foot tree or a 5 foot shrub- thats a huge amount of control!
wincy 6y ago
Oh interesting, apparently Honeycrisp could have been a trademark, which would have allowed them to sell them indefinitely under that name excluding others from doing so, but apparently that got messed up because the name Honeycrisp was included in the patent name. https://www.duetsblog.com/2018/09/articles/articles/if-only-honeycrisp-were-a-trademark-for-apples/ https://www.duetsblog.com/2018/09/articles/articles/if-only-...
maxerickson 6y ago
A bummer with apples is that climate seems to matter. Wisconsin Honeycrisp are lame. There's something they do to ruin varieties. I think it's either that or picking them green and gassing them for sale.
eps 6y ago
SweeTango is really quite there on the edge of a freaky mutant fruit. They often have oddly shaped and deformed seed cavities, opening up into the flesh in some weird ways. Many would have parts of flesh that look transparent and saturated in juice. They are tasty, but it's in-your-face obvious they aren't naturally evolved.

Zenst 6y ago

Imagine if they had clauses like this back in the time of Johnny Appleseed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed

haroldegibbons 6y ago
Johnny: Hello, Troll? Bridge Troll: <grunt> Johnny: Troll, could you jailbreak these Waalgarten apples for me? Bridge Troll: <scratches head> Bridge Troll: <smashes Waalgarten apples> Bridge Troll sloughs three Waalgarten apple seeds and a human toe in your general direction. Johnny: Hmmm, maybe I'll just buy them at Waalgarten. Dr Waalgarten: Hold it right there! Are those Waalgarten brand apples? Johnny: I, uh... Johnny points. Johnny: Oh, no! The red coats! Dr Waalgarten: What!? Wher... Johnny kicks Dr Waalgarten in the shins and runs away.

scollet 6y ago

Internet of Fruit

DiabloD3 6y ago

I don't think this is a EULA in the typical sense: its a GMO licensing agreement.

vikramkr 6y ago
Cotton candy grapes aren't bioengineered - this is referring to a plant patent which protects the grape variety.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  I think you mean they are engineered but are not GMO.
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    Bioengineered means a specific thing in this context. I dont like using the term "genetically modified" because, well, everything is genetically modified, thats how agriculture works. Bioengineering narrows down what's being discussed to genetic modifications using synthetic biology tools from the field of bioengineering. Even more specific would be to say they aren't transgenic plants. Were getting to the weird point now where you can use synthetic biological tools like crisper to change the DNA sequence of a plant, but because you aren't introducing a new genetic sequence, the resulting plant isn't considered a "GMO" because the legal definition is more concerned about transgenic sequences than the use of bioengineering tools. These are all just really vague and highly politicized terms.

hilbert42 6y ago

Unfortunately, that's not new. In recent years, I've seen those 'EULA'- patent-like warnings on many a fresh produce packaging. How did it happen? Well it's very simple really. As with DRM, copyrights and patents the average member of the public couldn't give a damn about them, so only those with financial vested interests hold enough sway with politicians to have laws altered. This isn't my idea, I picked the idea up from 'Mr Copyright' (Cory Doctorow) who wrote about such matters a while back.

dheera 6y ago

Buy 100 bags of these grapes, feed them to some animals, and set them free? I'd love to see those animals read and "agree" to a EULA.

pkaye 6y ago
I don't think the seeds will produce the same kind of fruits. I think its like apples in that you have to clone a cutting to get consistent quality.
- wmoxam 6y ago
  Exactly. Every seed would result in a different tasting grape. Some of the plants grown from seed would be susceptible to phylloxera too. A better method would be to try to get the stem to grow. Basically dip the cut end in a rooting hormone and plant it.
homero 6y ago
Monsanto has sued farmers who had plants that grew from seeds that flew from a neighbor
- pfdietz 6y ago
  No, they sued a farmer who concentrated glyphosate resistant traces in his soybeans by spraying his field with that herbicide. Had he not done that, Monsanto would have done nothing (and likely could have done nothing). The courts properly recognized the farmers conduct as willful patent infringement.
  - 8note 6y ago
    If it weren't for the neighbors having the patented seeds I imagine they'd also have no legs to stand on?
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      You mean, Monsanto? No. Monsanto's patents were valid regardless of how the farmer got those seeds. The action of willfully concentrating the resistance genes is what got him in trouble.

mijoharas 6y ago

So... Anyone know if this is likely to hold up in court? It sounds absurd, but IANAL. The other thing that I keep thinking about is resale. How does that tie in?

sombremesa 6y ago
Maybe. There are GMO patents. As written it is a bit too broad since it does not allow the consumer to synthesize anything in their bodies that coincides with what's in the fruit.
- nixonpjoshua1 6y ago
  In the USA there are also "plant patents" which like software patents aren't recognized in most countries. It doesn't require it to be GMO, just to have undergone certain types of selection and breeding and be registered in the right way. GMO patents are usually done via standard utility patents, the plant patent is actually a third category separate from design or utility patents.
Alex3917 6y ago
> Anyone know if this is likely to hold up in court? It would already be illegal to grow clones of the plant anyway, at least for commercial use, so whether or not the EULA is binding is kind of irrelevant.
thatguy0900 6y ago
The grapes are under patent, it's not the eula that's making it illegal its the patent. See Monsanto and it's trademarked seeds https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-patents-sue-farmers-547/ https://www.rt.com/usa/monsanto-patents-sue-farmers-547/
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Trademark != patent
united893 6y ago

vadym909 6y ago

Really sweet grapes that kids love avbl at Costco Mountain View. I can imagine why they don't want it copied.

rbecker 6y ago

Related: After the invasion of Iraq, the US occupying force issued 100 orders as to how the new state is to be run. Among them is order 81, which prohibits saving and planting of patented seeds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders

whyenot 6y ago

These are cotton candy grapes. They are a horticultural variety that was produced through traditional breeding practices to increase the sugar content, reduce tartness, and add the hint of vanilla flavor. Those all come from traditional crossing of other genetic lines of grapes. The process was more difficult because cotton candy grapes are seedless, so each generation had to be propagated using tissue culture.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Don’t they usually just keep the parent strains a secret and create hybrid seeds?
- wmoxam 6y ago
  No, not for grapes
WatchDog 6y ago
How do they selectively breed seedless plants? Wont plants propagated via tissue have the same DNA?
- markdown 6y ago
  Yup, I don't understand this. Vegetative propagation is cloning.
- whyenot 6y ago
  No, because the part of the plant that is being tissue cultured is the immature embryo. After pollination, the flowers of seedless grapes still produce an embryo, but the embryo stops developing when it is very small, and there is no fully formed seed (a process called stenospermocarpy). To grow the offspring of a cross, breeders have to dissect the immature fruit (the flower's ovary) and remove the immature embryo. The embryo is then transferred to tissue culture media where it is grown into a plant with roots and leaves that can eventually be transferred to soil.
  - 6y ago

vikramkr 6y ago

Other than the part about reproducing from seeds, this is a pretty standard plant patent situation in the US. There are all sorts of restrictions on what you can patent, and the plant patent landscape is quite reasonable (unlike software patents). Plants like the cotton candy grapes in this post are really difficult to develop, and 20 years of legal protection is pretty reasonable. Remember this is agriculture- things move relatively slowly, and you cant corner the market of a variety in 20 years - you probably won't have patent protection by the time a plant reaches max market penetrstion anyway, but you'll have made your money during the first few years. And if you purchase patented varieties of fruit for your home garden (you might already have a couple!) you'll notice the patent fee for them barely registers - shipping costs are probably higher than the patent cost for your new citrus. As I was alluding to though, there are restrictions, including that the plant has to be asexually reproduced and the infringing plant has to be identical to the parent, which does not apply to seed born progeny. Maybe there's some aspect of the plant variety protection act in play - I'm not as familiar with that - or maybe they're referring to using tissue from the aborted seeds present in seedless grapes to tissue culture out a clone, IDK.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Not to mention plants are much harder to clone at scale, since the parent strains can be kept secret which effectively prevents seed propagation. It’s easy to clone one for personal use, but to scale it out for commercial sale is much, much harder (depending on the type of fruit).
- saalweachter 6y ago
  Propagating by cutting is the norm for many (most?) varieties of fruits.
Robotbeat 6y ago
I don't like plant patents like this as they are infringing on natural rights of people that have been around since the invention of agriculture. I grew potatoes in my garden after some store-bought ones developed eyes. It never crossed my mind to check if they were patented first, and it's absurd that I'd have to. The monopolization of everything is insane. We're binding ourselves up tighter and tighter in paper.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

I was curious about the legality of this, and the USPTO has a very detailed overview on plant patents: https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/types-patent-applications/general-information-about-35-usc-161 https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/... . I.e., this isn't a "EULA", it's just really a description of the patent rules that cover these Cotton Candy Grapes. I thought it particularly interesting that for some reason "tubers" are called out specifically as not being provided patent protection.

vikramkr 6y ago
Thats because plant patents cover varieties that won't really propagated themselves asexually naturally (or won't come true from seed). Tubers will keep propagating by themselves - you cant call out someone for infringing a patent on a potato if you miss one when harvesting and it makes more of itself. Although there's always grey area - plant reproduction is complicated! Tubers and seeds are however covered under plant variety protection, but that's a different legal code than patents.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
Why incur the cost of printing this on the package? It’s a trivial expense. But agricultural margins aren’t that wide.
- Mountain_Skies 6y ago
  Marketing perhaps? Maybe they think the notice makes the product seem exclusive and so high quality that it needs special government protection because everyone is dying to reproduce it.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Because some goof lawyer suggested it and the marginal cost of adding the text was ~0. A patent like that is a ticket to huge margins as far as agriculture is concerned. It makes sense that people would err on the side of protecting it.

mdtancsa 6y ago

I love the little trolling at the end with the stem in a glass of water! Cue, "Fight the Power"

tubetime 6y ago
sadly it doesn't seem to be sprouting roots. oh well.

sushicalculus 6y ago

There's a documentary on Netflix called Food, Inc. that goes into Monsanto's vendetta against farmers, suing them for intellectual property theft if their GMO seeds blow into their fields from a neighbors field. The entire documentary made me very sad because I could not think of any solution

vikramkr 6y ago
While GMO regulation is a tough issue, this post has nothing to do with GMOs - the grapes in the post are under a standard plant patent and are non bioengineered.
gruez 6y ago
>There's a documentary on Netflix called Food, Inc. that goes into Monsanto's vendetta against farmers, suing them for intellectual property theft if their GMO seeds blow into their fields from a neighbors field. AFAIK that's not an accurate depiction of what monsanto has been doing. According to wikipedia[1] monsanto says they won't "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means". I'm not sure what the exact that was discussed in the documentary, but the ones mentioned in the wikipedia article all have elements of the farmer doing something intentionally, eg. >The case began in 2007, when Monsanto sued Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman who in 1999 bought seed for his second planting from a grain elevator – the same elevator to which he and others sold their transgenic crops.[17] The elevator sold the soybeans as commodities, not as seeds for planting.[17][18] Bowman tested the new seeds, and found that ,as he had expected, some were resistant to glyphosate. He intentionally replanted his harvest of GM seeds in subsequent years, supplementing them with more soybeans he bought at the elevator. [...] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_plaintiff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_plaint...
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > According to wikipedia[1] monsanto says they won't "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means". Well that's telling, in that they still claim to have the right to shut down such a farmer.

ggm 6y ago

I wonder if you could drive this to generic by widespread disobeying behaviour? Thermos became generic because they lost control. Asprin because of war reparations. Hoover was a proper name. Deliberately jonny-appleseeding the living bejesus out of these grapes could make it next to impossible to say who dun it, from memory Grape Genome is quite plastic. (I am not advocating this. I am asking if the patent would fall if you could demonstrate it existed in sustaining forms in the wild, widespread)

vikramkr 6y ago
So the question you ask in parenthesis is different from the question you ask int he first paragraph. If you prove the plant existed widespread in the wild before the patent holder tried to apply for the patent, then yes, the plant is not patentable. Furthermore, if the variety is not reproduced asexually, then it is not patentable. This is basically plant prior art. You cant patent air conditioners because they already exist. However, if you do what you mentioned in the first paragraph and go and propagated a ton of plants and make them widespread after the fact, then no you haven't invalidated the patent. You just infringed on it even more and probably have to pay a bigger fine. In general, you don't get to escape the legal consequences of an action by doing the action even more times. That just makes the consequences worse.
- myself248 6y ago
  Here's how I interpreted GP's question: Suppose I drop a ton of these seeds all over the place. Some land in your backyard. Some of those take root. The next year, you notice some volunteer grapes growing on your fence, taste one, and decide it's pretty good. If you give some to your friend so they can plant the seeds, are you culpable? If you sell some, are you culpable?
  - vikramkr 6y ago
    If its propagated by seeds its not patentable - so I don't think it's possible for that sort of scenario to rise. If you asexually propagated a plant and let a neighbor take a cutting, then I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer, but that situation sounds similar to the what happens if you unknowingly buy stolen art and try to auction it type question. It would probably be a very interesting legal battle at the least - and the original propagator would probably be liable, but that's definitely an interesting scenario. I doubt the end result is going to be that the patent owner just loses protection.

quixoticelixer- 6y ago

This isn't 'new' at all.

cmckn 6y ago

Mostly off topic, but cotton candy grapes are super delicious.

tipoftheiceberg 6y ago

https://ifg.world/ https://ifg.world/ >See ‘Grapes’ For anyone interested in the breeders behind these (delicious) grapes. Side note: I am very excited to see this thread alive.. I remember seeing it on New with 1 upvote thinking it wouldn't make the front page.

mherdeg 6y ago

The label on the packaging reminds me of Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Calorie Man", dystopian near-future sf about what could happen if all the viable seeds were patented ( http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/WINDUP-STORIES.htm http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/WINDUP-STORIES.h... ).

vaccinator 6y ago

I have seen something similar on a blueberry plant I purchased.

lucioperca 6y ago

I once read similar warning on a raspberry shroud I bought. It warned me not do cutting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(plant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_(plant)). I did not know of this technique, but now I know. So I do not know if these warnings are effective or get the idea across to people that you can do these things.

mnw21cam 6y ago
The Streisand Effect in action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

jrockway 6y ago

It seems this is just marketing text dressed up as a EULA: "oh, these grapes are so neat they need a legal disclaimer!" The underlying law that protects the patent seems to exist whether or not you are informed of it, so there is probably no need to put the text on the packaging. If you scroll down on Twitter, I have to say that the "joy" emoji with a picture of the stem in a glass of water is hilarious, however. (Reminds me of the time I bought an Intel processor, which came with an Intel sticker. The sticker came with a warning that it was not to be applied to anything not containing an Intel processor. It is now applied to my Nintendo Switch. All I can say is that I'm glad corporate lawyers are expensive, or we'd all be in Sticker Jail by now.)

Puts 6y ago

I think this article was posted here a while back: https://qz.com/africa/1900035/the-lie-of-monsantos-genetically-modified-cotton-in-burkina-faso/ https://qz.com/africa/1900035/the-lie-of-monsantos-genetical... It's ironic how GMO has been sold as the solution to poverty and starvation and then in reality it's just been used to prevent poor farmers from reusing seeds by slightly changing and copyrighting them. Yay for humanity!

mschuster91 6y ago
And you'll get downvoted pretty hard on HN and Reddit for being opposed to GMOs based on the extortion potential... well, it's "refreshing" to see that the fears are not baseless but reality.
- TomSwirly 6y ago
  Corporations are people, and cuddly people too! What could go wrong in giving them ownership of our food sources? /sarcasm /despair-for-humanity
bluGill 6y ago
Many GMO seeds are off patent now (in the last couple years the most important/useful patents have expired). Also several GMO seeds like Golden rice were carefully never patented to make it easier for poor to use them - and the poor still cannot get/use those seeds even though they are better. No sane farmer saves seeds. Hybrids seeds yield much better than saved seeds, so it is worth the cost to buy new seeds every year. Obviously this depends on the crop - not everything can be hybrid successfully.

bipson 6y ago

A colleague of mine has a small farm which he inherited and operates as part-time-business. He once wanted to sell some surplus seeds from a harvest to other farmers on a facebook page or similar. He was quickly reminded that he was strictly not allowed to this, since he did not own the rights. The cooperative he operates under (basically the only way farming is done here) sold/gave him the seeds and the right to plant them and resell/bring the crops to them afterwards. Everything else was "unlicensed" and would be fined harshly. That's just the way it is - particularly with newly developed variants. Breeding takes decades and needs to pay off somehow. For a different view on this I suggest the SciFri podcast on the new "Cosmic Crisp" Apple. Or some research on the "Honey Crisp", "Pink Lady", etc.

bArray 6y ago

I've seen similar on products in the UK for muli-pack chocolate bars. They have something like "Mutlipack. This may not be used for individual sale" or something like this. It seems pretty crazy they are allowed to do this, you would think that once you have purchased the food item you are allowed to do with it as you wish (within reason).

jstanley 6y ago
You can sell them separately though, those words are just words, they aren't any kind of contract. It's just a deterrent to stop shops from selling them separately because some customers might question it and then assume the shop is up to something dodgy.
gbronner 6y ago
That's common. Often the individual items don't have the correct labeling to be legal for sale.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  They are usually missing things like the nutrition information, which will be on the enclosing multi-pack.

znpy 6y ago

Are these patents even enforceable? If I planted seeds from those grapes, could anyone come after me?

thelastname 6y ago

That's why I'm against GMO.