3 ms·

you can patent A FUCKING PLANT??? americans are batshit crazy if you ask me

• rayiner 14y ago
  You can patent genetic modifications to plants.
• drucken 14y ago
  Not sure where you live, but legally in the EU it is even worse, though thankfully orders of magnitude smaller scale than the US at this time. The EU directive "on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions" (Directive 98/44/EC), implemented by all EU member states and even some non-EU states as of 15 January 2007, states "biological material which is isolated from its natural environment ... may be the subject of an invention even if it previously occurred in nature."! This goes even beyond an international agreement on IP rights (TRIPS). [1] The main mitigating factor is that EU governments are not particularly IP conscious and are terrified of the public backlash if they attempt to enforce any bio patents - most Europeans have no idea DNA is patentable! In addition, most of the infringers are actually related to the state due to very large welfare systems or academia. Private companies do not have a strong or irreversible grip in these areas, yet. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_legal_protection_of_biotechnological_inventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_legal_protecti... TL;DR. Everywhere is batshit crazy these days...