4 ms·
I've been thinking about this a lot since I first read about it yesterday. Here's what I think is _fair_ (throwing out doctrine, etc.). IA(definitely)NAL. Mons
by nlh 14y ago
I've been thinking about this a lot since I first read about it yesterday. Here's what I think is _fair_ (throwing out doctrine, etc.). IA(definitely)NAL.
Monsanto has every right to get a patent on the 1G seeds. They have every right to sell those seeds -- they put money and effort into designing a (theoretically) improved product and should be rewarded for their investment.
Once they sell the 1G seeds, however, that's it. If the resulting plants produce equal-quality 2G seeds, then so be it. Once the farmer has purchased the 1G seeds (presumably from Monsanto), that's the end of the road for Monsanto. They've produced a product, sold it, and made their money.
What's happening here is that Monsanto is using the courts to compensate for a bad business model and a flaw in their design. If they want to continue to get farmers to purchase seeds from them year after year, then what they should have done is engineered the seeds to "expire" after a generation: The results plants should produce 2G seeds that are in some way inferior to the 1G seeds.
That way, farmers have a natural incentive to keep purchasing 1G seeds year after year. No lawsuits or restrictive license agreements needed. If farmers want the best, they buy from Monsanto. If they are ok with the inferior 2G seeds, then they can harvest their own and keep planting.
If it's not possible for Monsanto to engineer the seeds as such, well, too bad. The buck stops there. They need to charge more for the 1G seeds then. But farmers won't pay if the cost is too high? Well, again, too bad. Their job is to convince farmers that buying 1G seeds at 2-3x the price is worth it because of the improved product. If not, well, back to the drawing board.
This comes down to Monsanto trying to use a license agreement and the courts to compensate for a flaw in their product design, and that isn't right.
- crusso 14y agoI agree. Further, if Monsanto wants to reap the benefit of their product's self-reproduction; they should be required to pay cleanup costs (by the EPA? Department of Agriculture?) to remove "contaminated" soybeans from the rest of the environment. It's not this farmer's fault that Monsanto's product has polluted the stock of available leftover soybeans. Monsanto should be the entity on the hook here, not the farmer.
- sshumaker 14y agoThey do own technology to achieve this: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology#section_3 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techn... It basically prevents G2 seeds altogether, but they've pledged not to use it because of public outcry, instead relying on these contracts. If you seriously think through the consequences of usage of this kind of tech, it's pretty dire. Due to natural cross-pollination, we could be setting ourselves up for a world where everyone must buy all of their seeds from Monsanto and their ilk, who would have a monopoly on the world's food supply. That's bad news indeed.
- crusso 14y agoWhy? Patents expire. If G2 seeds did not exist then there would be a greater market for alternatives. Monsanto wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to benefit from G1 seeds through GX seeds while contaminating the supply of available non-Monsanto seeds. In cases of cross-pollination, that's Monsanto's fault. They should be required to clean up their own mess. I don't see how they'd have grounds to control seeds that were cross-pollinated through their negligence. Monsanto is worried about more than just some outcry if they put in termination genes. They could be opening themselves up to a great deal of pain.
- CamperBob2 14y agoPatents expire. Unfortunately, so do monocultures.
- elemenohpee 14y agoWow, that's literally insane. Yes, let's see if we can undermine this elegant and stable natural process that has evolved over billions of years so that we can avoid the uncomfortable experience of reexamining the assumptions of our economic system.