3 ms·

The good news is that patents expire. After that the knowledge becomes public domain. So, once they expire, we all benefit.

McDyver 3y ago
So what's the point? To maximise profits while making humanity worse off? Why can't we all benefit from the start? It's a sick system, perpetuated by sick people
- vdaea 3y ago
  Why would companies spend millions developing the next plant if they knew the second it's out other companies will copy it and compete with them?
  - mirpa 3y ago
    Why would people do anything if they get threats from lawyers?
  - JDEW 3y ago
    Then they just shouldn’t? There’s plenty of universities, cooperatives, and passionate growers who have developed crops and seeds in the past and will surely continue to do so in the future. The patent system is useful to address very specific market failures in very specialized industries where the above systems fail, not to turn the whole world into a rental unit.
    - gruez 3y ago
      >There’s plenty of universities, cooperatives, and passionate growers who have developed crops and seeds in the past and will surely continue to do so in the future. The patent system doesn't prevent those entities from developing their own crops and releasing it for free.
      - effable 3y ago
        According to the article, such patents seem to come with a lot of restrictions and the patent apparently applies to traits of the patented plant: When a company is granted a utility patent on a type of seed, it doesn’t just own the seed. It also owns its traits (color, texture, disease resistance, the way it was grown), future generations of that seed and all of the rights to research. So, if a plant breeder like Morton develops his own variety of lettuce and the lettuce matches any of the traits of a patented variety – whether it be color, the curliness of the leaf or a trait that makes it conducive to a particular climate – the breeder is technically in violation of patent law and risks getting sued by the patent owner. So according to the article, the patent system actually does place heavy restrictions on research in this area.
        gruez 3y ago
        I searched around and found that "utility patents" are basically the default type of patent (as opposed to design patents or plant patents). Also, contrary to what the above passage might suggest, utility patents expire after 20 years, so it's not like companies will have a perpetual license over a particular trait. Finally, it's unclear how tightly scoped a "trait" has to be in the current patent regime. I would agree that exclusive rights for "heat tolerant broccoli" would be bad for innovation, because it prevents other companies from trying to developing other ways of heat resistance. However, I don't see anything wrong with granting exclusive rights to "heat tolerant broccoli broccoli by modifying this particular gene". Given how bad the Guardian article is with other parts of patent law, I'm somewhat skeptical of their implication that you can patent entire functional categories.
      - mikro2nd 3y ago
        It does, actually, because one of the big seed companies can then simply take that seed and... patent it as their own.
        gruez 3y ago
        That would be prior art and would invalidate the patent. There would be costs for such a lawsuit, but I don't see why that's a good reason for getting rid of the patent system. It would be like saying we should get rid of property rights because companies could abuse it by claiming that other people's stuff belongs to them and the rightful owner has to go through an expensive lawsuit to get it resolved.
- refurb 3y ago
  How is society worse off? If there wasn't a patent the discovery wouldn't be made.
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    That begs the question pretty hard.
  - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
    Less discoveries are made because of patents, as there is no reason to develop patented things any further.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      That's not true. You can get another patent out of it.
      - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
        And then what?
        thfuran 3y ago
        Troll, license, sell, whatever
127361 3y ago
Perhaps we should make exceptions for small scale growers? So royalties can only be extracted from those with large scale cultivation, and royalties should be taken from the profits made only.
mikro2nd 3y ago
There are a couple of tricks the seed companies use to get around this: First off, a year or two before the patents on a variety expire, they simple patent some other feature of the variety. Problem solved (from their perspective). Second, several years before the patent expires on a variety they'll have a "new, improved" variety (often bred from the first) that their sales-people push hard onto farmers so that by the time the patent expires the variety basically has very little/no commercial value - it's been superseded by the "improved" variety in commercial use.

McDyver 3y ago

So what's the point? To maximise profits while making humanity worse off? Why can't we all benefit from the start? It's a sick system, perpetuated by sick people

vdaea 3y ago
Why would companies spend millions developing the next plant if they knew the second it's out other companies will copy it and compete with them?
- mirpa 3y ago
  Why would people do anything if they get threats from lawyers?
- JDEW 3y ago
  Then they just shouldn’t? There’s plenty of universities, cooperatives, and passionate growers who have developed crops and seeds in the past and will surely continue to do so in the future. The patent system is useful to address very specific market failures in very specialized industries where the above systems fail, not to turn the whole world into a rental unit.
  - gruez 3y ago
    >There’s plenty of universities, cooperatives, and passionate growers who have developed crops and seeds in the past and will surely continue to do so in the future. The patent system doesn't prevent those entities from developing their own crops and releasing it for free.
    - effable 3y ago
      According to the article, such patents seem to come with a lot of restrictions and the patent apparently applies to traits of the patented plant: When a company is granted a utility patent on a type of seed, it doesn’t just own the seed. It also owns its traits (color, texture, disease resistance, the way it was grown), future generations of that seed and all of the rights to research. So, if a plant breeder like Morton develops his own variety of lettuce and the lettuce matches any of the traits of a patented variety – whether it be color, the curliness of the leaf or a trait that makes it conducive to a particular climate – the breeder is technically in violation of patent law and risks getting sued by the patent owner. So according to the article, the patent system actually does place heavy restrictions on research in this area.
      - gruez 3y ago
        I searched around and found that "utility patents" are basically the default type of patent (as opposed to design patents or plant patents). Also, contrary to what the above passage might suggest, utility patents expire after 20 years, so it's not like companies will have a perpetual license over a particular trait. Finally, it's unclear how tightly scoped a "trait" has to be in the current patent regime. I would agree that exclusive rights for "heat tolerant broccoli" would be bad for innovation, because it prevents other companies from trying to developing other ways of heat resistance. However, I don't see anything wrong with granting exclusive rights to "heat tolerant broccoli broccoli by modifying this particular gene". Given how bad the Guardian article is with other parts of patent law, I'm somewhat skeptical of their implication that you can patent entire functional categories.
    - mikro2nd 3y ago
      It does, actually, because one of the big seed companies can then simply take that seed and... patent it as their own.
      - gruez 3y ago
        That would be prior art and would invalidate the patent. There would be costs for such a lawsuit, but I don't see why that's a good reason for getting rid of the patent system. It would be like saying we should get rid of property rights because companies could abuse it by claiming that other people's stuff belongs to them and the rightful owner has to go through an expensive lawsuit to get it resolved.
refurb 3y ago
How is society worse off? If there wasn't a patent the discovery wouldn't be made.
- maxerickson 3y ago
  That begs the question pretty hard.
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  Less discoveries are made because of patents, as there is no reason to develop patented things any further.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    That's not true. You can get another patent out of it.
    - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
      And then what?
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Troll, license, sell, whatever

127361 3y ago

Perhaps we should make exceptions for small scale growers? So royalties can only be extracted from those with large scale cultivation, and royalties should be taken from the profits made only.

mikro2nd 3y ago

There are a couple of tricks the seed companies use to get around this: First off, a year or two before the patents on a variety expire, they simple patent some other feature of the variety. Problem solved (from their perspective). Second, several years before the patent expires on a variety they'll have a "new, improved" variety (often bred from the first) that their sales-people push hard onto farmers so that by the time the patent expires the variety basically has very little/no commercial value - it's been superseded by the "improved" variety in commercial use.