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I remember, there was a case where a farmer grew patented plants on his field. They spread to his neighbours field who then got sued by the patent holding compa

• tptacek 4y ago
  No, he got sued by the patent holding company for using those seeds and then spraying them with Roundup, which would have killed off his crop had they not been the patented seeds. This is true of all the cases of people being sued for cultivating "Roundup-Ready" crops: the story they want to tell is that they were sued for cultivating seeds that accidentally wound up on their fields, but the facts established at trial were that, however the seeds ended up there, the farmers deliberately exploited the patented system.
  • luoc 4y ago
    Thanks for the insight! Saw this in a documentary and it's been a while...
  • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Yeah, the courts aren't always friendly to clever "hacks" on the legal system. Intent matters, and facts can show intent.
  • cnity 4y ago
    God forbid the farmers benefit for free in some way from the unpredictable and uncontrollable pollination of a plant genetically engineered to be a highly successful cultivar. I'm not attacking you here, but the logic decided by the courts may be lawful but it is not moral (in my opinion). It's as if a noisy neighbour hosts a late night party and you happen to enjoy the music. The neighbour notices and decides to charge you for the streaming fee.
    • pfdietz 4y ago
      That patents genes spread lightly onto his field didn't give him a "get out of patent free card" to then concentrate those genes by spraying the field with herbicide. The courts properly understood that intent and actions matter here. The farmer was in the wrong and justice was done.
      • deleted 4y ago
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      • ladyattis 4y ago
        It just demonstrates how patents are a form of rent seeking. You own the product of your labor but you should not be able to assume you own the accidental products that are related to your labor (ex. buying tools from a tool smith which then you use to make your own tool smithy).
        • tptacek 4y ago
          There is no way that analogy holds in this case. The farmer didn't cultivate their own RoundUp to spray, among other problems with it.
          • f-securus 4y ago
            What if the farmer was trying to clear the land with roundup and the accidental gmo modified crops prevented him from doing so. Could he sue for damages?
            • Kalium 4y ago
              Perhaps! Though in this case it seems he engaged in the behavior over an extended period of time and did not consider the patented crops a problem.
            • pfdietz 4y ago
              No, if he didn't save seeds from crop plants on that land. That saving of seeds after spraying was the incriminating act.
  • mschuster91 4y ago
    So what? I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want on my field as long as I don't use pesticides or processing that has been banned by law, without anyone being allowed to sue me for that.
    • pfdietz 4y ago
      He did something that only made sense if it were deliberate and intentional violation of the patent. Intent matters.
    • randomdata 4y ago
      As a farmer with experience growing roundup-ready crops: In order to obtain roundup-ready seeds you have to sign a contract with the vender. In said agreement, you agree to not do such things. If you want to do whatever you want with your field, don't enter into contractual agreements where you agree to follow certain rules.
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      • mschuster91 4y ago
        > As a farmer with experience growing roundup-ready crops: In order to obtain roundup-ready seeds you have to sign a contract with the vender. In said agreement, you agree to not do such things. The farmer had not entered into any contract with anyone, that is the point. It's not his fault if pollen from his neighbor's field entered his field, even if they contained "patented" technology.
        • randomdata 4y ago
          If you are referring to a case where litigation was executed under the terms of patent contract, the farmer – being a member of the public who grants such patents – has still entered into a contract by virtue of choosing to be a member of the public who has agreed that patent contracts are desirable to issue. The public had no obligation to issue the patent, but chose to. The farmer need not be a member of that public, but chose to be.
  • bilsbie 4y ago
    But how did he get enough seeds by chance to have his whole field be round up ready?
    • bluGill 4y ago
      He planted a field next to someone else's roundup ready crop. He then collected the seeds from the whole field. Next year he planted the seeds collected, waiting for the crop to start growing and sprayed roundup, which killed all seeds not roundup ready. Then the new crop went to seed and since all the parents were roundup ready, the seeds also were roundup ready (I'm not sure if roundup ready is a recessive or dominate trait, which will influence which % is roundup ready using basic genetics). Those final seeds were collected and were enough to have a whole field that was roundup ready next year.
  • burkaman 4y ago
    > the story they want to tell is that they were sued for cultivating seeds that accidentally wound up on their fields, but the facts established at trial were that, however the seeds ended up there, the farmers deliberately exploited the patented system. I don't understand the distinction you're making. "cultivating seeds" and "deliberately exploiting the patented system" mean the same thing in this case. Spraying them with Roundup is how you cultivate them. Do you mean that it's illegal to buy Roundup if you haven't already bought the seeds that go with it, or something? Edit: I think maybe you're saying that Monsanto has patented the very act of applying Roundup to a Roundup-Ready crop. So not only are the seeds and pesticides patented, but the method of applying one to the other is patented. If that's the case, that's a dumb patent that shouldn't be allowed to exist.
    • zo1 4y ago
      My understanding of OP is that the farmer used Roundup on his crops knowing full well that his "natural" and "non patented" crops will be killed by Roundup, which the patented plants are naturally immune to by design.
    • StrictDabbler 4y ago
      It's not illegal to purchase and bulk-spray Round-up to an incompatible crop. It's just stupid. It is expensive and it will kill the plants. The lawsuit alleged that the farmer's behavior was so stupid that he must have known his crop was Roundup-Ready. That's not consistent with accidental pollination. It suggests that he deliberately cultivated or obtained seeds that were Roundup-Ready and that he knew his crop would survive the pesticide. Bulk-spraying Roundup establishes awareness and intent. The farmer was unable to provide a convincing explanation for why he would attempt to poison his entire crop, year after year, so the court concluded he was engaged in deliberate patent evasion.
      • pfdietz 4y ago
        It's worse than that: the farmer knew there was slight contamination of his field with Roundup Ready plants. So, he deliberately sprayed the field with Roundup to kill all the others, applying artificial selection to concentrate the trace of contamination. I believe he repeated this more than once. So, he was guilty of engaging in deliberate production of not trace, but concentrated patented seeds.
  • xedrac 4y ago
    What is a farmer to do when mother nature infects his crop, against his will, with pollen from the GMO crop? I think the lawsuit should go the other way. Monsanto should pay for destroying the ability to grow heirloom seeds without getting infected. They want to keep it protected? Then require it to be grown in quarantine.
    • tedunangst 4y ago
      If you want to keep roundup ready crops from spreading among your heirloom crops, I would recommend against spraying the heirloom crops with roundup.
    • HDThoreaun 4y ago
      All the farmer had to do was not apply roundup to his crop when he hadn't planted the roundup resistant seeds.
      • xedrac 4y ago
        Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that his crop is being pollinated against his will, and why should he lose the freedom to spray something on his crop because his neighbor planted a certain seed? Why does it have to infect everyone like a virus?
        • kasey_junk 4y ago
          Because spraying roundup on non-roundup ready crops has 1 outcome, it kills them. There is no reasonable reason to do it other than to avoid the patent. If roundup ready crops end up in your fields accidentally and then you don’t spray roundup you don’t run afoul of litigation.
        • onepointsixC 4y ago
          Spray his crops with something that will 100% kill all of his original crop and only keeping the cross contaminated crop, which he will then specifically cultivate. Common now, it's really a shut and close case. He had no explanation as to an alternative valid reason to have done so and lost the case.
  • tarotuser 4y ago
    This is another case where patent law superseded physical trespass and pollution/littering laws. Monsanto should have paid the farmer for polluting the farmer's field ALONG WITH being required to remove all Monsanto-owned plants. And if that means roundup-ing the whole field, paying for all damages treble, and then removing the living plants, so be it.
    • pfdietz 4y ago
      But no harm was done to the farmer, had the farmer not himself performed an act showing he was violating the patent. So, Monsanto didn't owe the farmer anything. The farmer had "unclean hands".
  • quantified 4y ago
    The farmers were not trying to grow the patented seeds. They shouldn't be liable for their neighbor's trash blowing on their fields. The use of Roundup is another travesty.
    • edmundsauto 4y ago
      The farmer may have claimed they weren't trying to. The fact they used Roundup, which would have killed their crop if it weren't the GM seeds, indicates otherwise.
      • quantified 4y ago
        Some other farmer's trash blows into my field, it's mine.
        • pfdietz 4y ago
          And if you then spray Roundup on that trash to concentrate the patented trait, you've deliberately violated the patent.
          • UncleEntity 4y ago
            Just like selling a used book violates the copyright?
            • pfdietz 4y ago
              No, obviously not like that at all. In particular, growing plants is copying them. Also, patents are not copyrights.
          • quantified 4y ago
            I entered no contract with the patent holder. I get what you're saying from that perspective. It's just BS.
            • 4y ago
  • kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    All made possible because Monsanto controls the seeds and the majority of glyphosate production so they could correlate consumption with who hadn't paid the toll.
  • kirubakaran 4y ago
    (Matasano / Monsanto confusion intensifies)
    • tptacek 4y ago
      I've said this before, but we put a sign up on the door of our Mountain View office, because people thought we were the evil mutant corn company.
  • BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    That patent still should be enforced by any sensible court system.
• luoc 4y ago
  Industry's response, of course, will be plants that epigenetically load proprietary genetic material at runtime...
• richbell 4y ago
  > I remember, there was a case where a farmer grew patented plants on his field. They spread to his neighbours field who then got sued by the patent holding company for not licensing that plant. My memory is a bit fuzzy here but you get the idea. You are thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise.... He is often heralded by anti-GMO activists as an example of the dangers of GMOs and Monsanto, but the fact of the matter is that the "cross contamination" is a myth. He deliberately took cultivars from his neighbour's plot and analysis showed that they comprised a significant portion of his crops, which wouldn't be possible by cross-pollination alone. Should seeds be patented? Are Bayer, Monsanto, Syngenta, and agrochemicals companies evil? These are all worth discussing (the answer to the second question is yes), but that particular myth is not.
  • luoc 4y ago
    Thanks for the link :)
  • skywal_l 4y ago
    > He deliberately took cultivars from his neighbour's plot You mean stole? Where do you see this in the link you provided? That's what I read in the article. > As established in the original Federal Court trial decision, Percy Schmeiser, a canola breeder and grower in Bruno, Saskatchewan, first discovered Roundup-resistant canola in his crops in 1997.[4] He had used Roundup herbicide to clear weeds around power poles and in ditches adjacent to a public road running beside one of his fields, and noticed that some of the canola which had been sprayed had survived. Schmeiser then performed a test by applying Roundup to an additional 3 acres (12,000 m2) to 4 acres (16,000 m2) of the same field. He found that 60% of the canola plants survived. At harvest time, Schmeiser instructed a farmhand to harvest the test field. That seed was stored separately from the rest of the harvest, and used the next year to seed approximately 1,000 acres (4 km²) of canola.
    • Scoundreller 4y ago
      > The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme Court also ruled 9-0 that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology. Used their technology, yes, barely. Stole it? Well, the courts unequivocally didn't feel like he damaged (deprived?) Monsanto of anything.
• permo-w 4y ago
  I did not know about how GPL works until I read this comment. I’m glad I do now. thank you!