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Proprietary Grapes Come with Draconian End User License Agreement
- himinlomax 6y agoI don't see how this idiotic EULA can be enforceable. A farmer buying seeds from Monsanto is one thing: it's a business deal, Monsanto (or their resellers) can tack such a restriction onto the deal and it's obviously enforceable -- to a point. But for fruits sold in a grocery store ... even if the language in the one line "contract" turned out to be enforceable, which would completely retarded but could unfortunately happen, there's an obvious and immediate flaw. It's one line, so it evidently doesn't include any provision for a grocery buyer just gifting the seeds to a grower. Even if it did, what's the recourse? Get a homeless person to spit the seeds from the grapes he just bought in a cup. Who you gonna sue? How much is the patent holder going to get from a lice-infested, pee-smelling indigent? Why do they even bother putting that there? Then there's patent exhaustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S._law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....
- TheGrumpyBrit 6y agoAlso, they're seedless grapes. Planting them would be kind of pointless.
- himinlomax 6y agoFirst, seedless grapes do occasionally have seeds. Second, if they didn't, that would be entirely pointless.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoSeed traces in seedless grapes are almost always unviable. Us grape growers propagate these vines from clones. Breeders who work with seedless grapes have some horomonal techniques that can get a vine to produce some % of potentially viable seeds. Or one parent in the cross is a seeded variety and the seedless grape is just the pollen source.
- Scoundreller 6y agoOr micropropagation.
- echelon 6y agoThey have DNA. Also a skilled botanist can turn it into a tissue culture and propagate it.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoYou don't need seeds to propagate grapes. Cuttings will almost always root. Or you can graft in an existing rootstock.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoThere won't be any viable dormant hardwood with buds on a cluster like this in the grocery store. You'd need to do tissue culture. Which involves labratory equipment, a pile of chemicals, and a totally sterile environment.
- Scoundreller 6y agoMaybe it’s harder for plants, but people do cell cultures at home and cultivate them into “fruits” all the time in mycology. Including plates, filtered laminar(ish) air flow and sterilization. Dealing with plant cells seems a lot easier because you don’t have to conmpete with spores floating all around. You could buy a certified clean room that’s inspected for $20k. Or build your own for a few hundred bucks.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoSure, but you could also probably just buy a licensed potted vine of this from a nursery for like $20. :-)
- crumbshot 6y ago> Get a homeless person to spit the seeds from the grapes he just bought in a cup. Who you gonna sue? How much is the patent holder going to get from a lice-infested, pee-smelling indigent? There's really no need for this, you could have made your point without being unpleasant toward those who have fallen upon hard times.
- rwmj 6y agoOn the subject of grapes, my wife bought a packet of three varieties yesterday with the names printed on them: "sugranineteen", "sugrathirtyfive" and "sugrathirtyfour". Turns out these are highly selected grapes from this company: https://www.sun-world.com/proprietary-grape-varieties/ https://www.sun-world.com/proprietary-grape-varieties/ I notice you need a "licensee login" to read the details about the grapes. Needless to say they didn't taste very good, mainly very sweet.
- acvny 6y agoThis is where lawyers think the universe operates not on physics laws but on lawyers laws.
- ncmncm 6y agoHas the First Sale Doctrine been whittled away to nothing?
- jrockway 6y agoI don't think the first sale doctrine has ever let you manufacture a patented product just because you happened to buy one. From the previous discussion on the article, it appears that no EULA is necessary to prevent you from legally reselling the grapes you grow from parts you buy at the grocery store. That's just a law.
- tsjq 6y agoThis was on HN recently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761116
- MayeulC 6y agoAt least it's only covered by patents, which will expire within 20 years. With regular copyright, this wouldn't have been within my lifetime.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoDevil's advocate: I spend my life and life savings to improve a common grape variety. In the end, it worked, people love it! Why shouldn't I profit from it? No one is forcing anyone to buy my grape. Had I invented a new vacuum cleaner I would have been able to make a killing without any hostility
- II2II 6y agoProblem 1: most (if not all) of the plants we eat have been intentionally improved upon at some point in their history. Many of the varieties that we consume are quite recent, so this is not a recent phenomena. Problem 2: an EULA is a dangerous twist that goes beyond patent protection. At least patent protection is of limited and reasonable duration, while an EULA is of indefinite duration. Problem 3: especially considering the scale of modern agriculture and the limited variety that reaches consumers, this is dangerous for food security.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago1. so what? does it mean that I can't make a living improving grape qualities? Even kitchen pots have improved during the last 500 years. So has everything. 2. EULA is useless, essentially it will be enforced if you plant them and start selling grafts 3. The state can take all it wants for food security, if needed.
- II2II 6y agoThere is nothing saying that you couldn't make a living off of improving grapes, though it would admittedly be more difficult. At the end of the day though, I am far more concerned about food security than the right of people to profit from IP. You can't simply wave the problem away by stating the state can take all they want. Many democratic states would be hesitant to do that and it would have far more grave long term consequences. If agriculture was more diverse, perhaps that wouldn't be a concern. The problem is the lack of diversity creates the potential to concentrate power over the food supply under the current model, never mind one with strong IP rights.
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- rbecker 6y agoLest anyone think seed patents are simply a fact of life, there are (or were) countries where they were not valid. For example Iraq, until the US occupying force issued its 100 orders, among them order 81, which prohibits the planting and saving of patented seeds without a license: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders
- drtillberg 6y agoWould a grape eater be in breach if a grape seed sprouted from his or her poo a few days after enjoying said grape? Are sanitation departments at risk of contributory infringement depending how they process and dispose of sewage containing grape remnants?
- royletron 6y agoI am so glad I wasn't the only person that questioned this. Also in relation to another story I saw that had found tomato plants growing on railways - and found these due to the onboard toilets dumping their contents directly on the line. The assumption being the commuters ate a lot of cheese & tomato sandwiches. Does this mean disaster is inevitable?!
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoa) It's seedless, so wouldn't happen. b) Grapes don't grow like that. They are a perennial hardwood species and need a cold stratification period before they are viable. So you'd need to poo somewhere where the seed sat over the winter and came up the following spring. Most vines in the wild grow from clones from the sprawling parent, with seed being spread by birds. c) Don't think the company cares about you. They're worried about large farms in the central valley etc. propagating without license. As I've said elsewhere in this thread I'm not sure why they bothered printing this on the package that consumers see. Propagation agreements are very common.
- dghf 6y ago> It's seedless, so wouldn't happen. So why are seeds explicitly mentioned in the EULA? (Also, why is "but not limited to" in quotation marks?)
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoWhy are seeds mentioned? I dunno, CYA I guess. It's a silly message.
- gadders 6y agoThis is not uncommon when you buy a new variety of plant from a garden centre. It's known as "Plant Breeders Rights" and is mainly to stop people buying the new plant and propagating it themselves with no money going back to the original breeder. I guess it's a bit analogous to software or music piracy - making multiple copies of someone else's original work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights
- jrockway 6y agoI think the expert they talked to had a good take. A plant reproducing is something the plant does. It's unclear whether you can be required by law to prevent it from doing its thing. (Well, it's actually not unclear; the supreme court says the law has that power. The law should probably be changed, though.) It would be more interesting with something with a bit more free will. Someone will eventually patent a dog breed. A boy dog will meet a girl dog and they'll have dog babies. Do you put the dog in prison for patent infringement? Do you kill the babies? All I can say is that nobody really cares about soybeans or grapes, but it will be a mess when the result is cute and fluffy.
- gambiting 6y ago>> A boy dog will meet a girl dog and they'll have dog babies. Do you put the dog in prison for patent infringement? Do you kill the babies? It's the same as if your dog attacks someone - even if it's "in their breed" it doesn't matter, you as the owner are responsible for its actions. If the dog is particularly aggressive it might be destroyed though.
- krageon 6y agoAn attack is violent and definitely bad for society. A dog making puppies is just a dog making puppies, nobody loses anything, nobody is hurt.
- Thiez 6y agoThe hypothetical company holding the patent will argue that they are suffering financial damage, so they are losing something. I think the dogs are a bit of a red herring here, drug patents are generally accepted by most of society, and it's patenting a natural process that happens when you throw the correct chemicals together under the correct circumstances. The "it's just chemicals reacting, nobody loses anything, nobody is hurt" argument will not get you anywhere.
- setr 6y ago
- brnt 6y agoBirds better be laywering up!
- coldcode 6y agoSo wrapping the fruit in shrink wrap requiring you to sign a legal agreement to open it is next? Maybe if they suspect you ate without agreeing you have to provide a poo sample in a deposition? You can't go to a grocery store anymore without a lawyer? Who comes up with these crazy ideas? Oh, yeah, lawyers.
- pfortuny 6y agoYou don’t use a food, you CONSUME it, which is a different action.
- piker 6y ago[edit: let's rephrase] On the word "use" in federal statutes, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_v._United_States and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._United_States_(1993) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._United_States_(1993)
- phonebucket 6y agoAre there extenuating circumstances? Does a food fight justify propagation?
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoI am a grape grower & hobby grape breeder so might have a perspective on this that others don't. There seems to be a few misconceptions in this thread. 1. Grapes are almost always propagated clonally, through dormant hardwood. Only grape breeders really grow grapes from seed, and they're not using the seeds from open pollinated grapes like these, they're doing deliberate crosses from pollen. If you could grow out the seeds (hint: you can't, it's seedless) from this grape you would not get something all that similar to its parent, and only maybe 15% of them would even be perfect flowered and fruit bearing. This "EULA" doesn't seem to cover pollen, which I don't think would be legally enforceable anyways. 2. Non-propagation agreements and propagation fees are extremely common. Newer varieties of grapes almost always having a fee back to the breeder. 3. Nobody is making decent money breeding grapes. Most new varieties are from university research departments on constantly decreasing budgets. The propagation fees are typically there to help offset losses. 4. The only thing unusual I see here is printing this kind of label on the package and also the proscription against growing from seed. Not sure why they'd bother. Propagating grapes from a grocery store cluster would be extremely difficult. To get a clone from it you'd need to do labratory tissue culture. To grow from seed you'd need to find the one grape in thousands that freakishly actually produced a viable seed (this variety is seedless) -- cold stratify keep it in the fridge for months without it drying out or getting mold and then plant it out in the spring, and even if you planted hundreds you would be unlikely to get a vine worth bothering with. EDIT: Also, let's say you actually legitimately wanted to grow or even breed with this vine, and you lived in the narrow climate range where it would succeed in growing. You could probably purchase dormant hardwood cuttings from a licensed nursery for less than $5 a vine. I don't think that's so odious. Or if you're a breeder you might even be able to coax another person with the same passion to mail you some pollen from it for free. FURTHER EDIT: Part of what might be happening here is that these new table grapes are considered by some to be a bit of a major advancement. The cotton candy type flavours are novel and the nice crisp flesh is desirable, and I believe they have pretty good shelf life as well. So the breeders are trying to protect something that is a bit of a win for them. I imagine in California in particular there is a desire to avoid growers in the central valley from propagating these en-masse without license. I imagine that in about 10-15 years there'll be a bunch of new varieties similar to these out there and it won't be as big of a concern.
- pjc50 6y agoThis to me is more of an argument against allowing GMO to be entrenched than any questions of product safety; you wouldn't turn over most of the world's arable land to a single megacorp, so why allow them to take over species?
- vonmoltke 6y agoGMOs are somewhat tangential to the issue of plant patents. Genetic engineering can be, and has been[1], used to create patent-free plants. On the flip side, genetic engineering is not necessary to create patentable plants, and in fact plant patents predate commercial genetic engineering by decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
- coldpie 6y agoThis has nothing to do with GMO. You can get protection for plant varieties derived through breeding, too. https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/plant-variety-protection https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/plant-variety-protection
- tantalor 6y agoI bought some lilies for my garden; the packaging forbids end users from "sexually reproducing" them.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoAt least now wine makers can dial up arbitrary sugar levels, without adding refined sugar!
- grawprog 6y ago>“The recipient of the produce contained in this package agrees not to propagate or reproduce any portion of this produce, including ‘but not limited to’ seeds, stems, tissue, and fruit." Food, crop and patents on life in general are pure evil. That'a the ultimate in consumer culture right there. 'You have the right to consume the food we produce for you, but we are the only ones who may produce it.' That's legislating control over life itself to companies and corporations. How can anyone possibly believe it's reasonable that someone could be punished because they popped some seeds into the ground and tried to grow some fruit? Agriculture has been the cornerstone of human society for thousands of years. What gives somw corporation the right to tell people they canmt practice one of the oldest human trades in existence?
- gruez 6y ago>Food, crop and patents on life in general are pure evil. That'a the ultimate in consumer culture right there. Is there a reason why it's any more evil than patents on machinery or other industrial processes? Is it just because "life is sacred"? It's only plants and livestock. I'd be much more concerned if it extended to humans, but we're not at that point yet. >'You have the right to consumer the food we produce for you, but we are the only ones who may produce it.' >That's legislating control over life itself to companies and corporations. >Agriculture has been the cornerstone of human society for thousands of years. What gives somw corporation the right to tell people they canmt practice one of the oldest human trades in existence? So? You can still grow grapes, just not the specially engineered/bred ones. Also, it's limited to 20 years, so you can grow all the cotton candy grapes you want two decades from now.
- JamesBarney 6y agoOr patents on live saving medication? You can always buy someone else's grape, but sometimes there's only one cancer med.
- kube-system 6y agoThere are zero cancer meds if humans do not dedicate resources to developing them. Right now we incentivize allocation of those resources under the promise that the successful development of a drug results in a financial reward. The change you are suggesting is not just a matter of patents but a broader conversation about economic systems.
- DenisM 6y agoIf you invent a new mousetrap you get to profit from it on your own terms, and everyone else is welcome to buy in or use the old mousetrap. Replace "a mousetrap" with "an organism" and the same law and logic still apply. Nothing is taken away from anyone, the old mousetrap is still there.
- cwkoss 6y agoI think you're dismissing a lot of externalities here - IMO most egregious of which is ag-IP owners trying to claim ownership/control over other people's plants that have been pollinated by their GMO plants due to pollen drift. I think a better analogy would be: you invent a new mousetrap, you offer it for $5 for only catching mice, but if it catches a rat they owe you $100. The user has to artificially restrict the fundamental utility of the product or else be subject to legal penalties. "Life, uh, finds a way" and it's morally hazardous to restrict a customer's control of their physical property for IP reasons.
- gruez 6y ago>IMO most egregious of which is ag-IP owners trying to claim ownership/control over other people's plants that have been pollinated by their GMO plants due to pollen drift. Addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761841 >I think a better analogy would be: you invent a new mousetrap, you offer it for $5 for only catching mice, but if it catches a rat they owe you $100. The user has to artificially restrict the fundamental utility of the product or else be subject to legal penalties. I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with this. If anything, I'm for it because it incentives the manufacturer to make effective products. The more effective their mouse trap is, the more money they make. Sounds like a good thing to me. It's not any different than unreal engine/unity charging you a % of your game's revenue as royalties.