6 ms·

Supreme Court rules for Monsanto in case against farmer

54 points by zacharyvoase 13y ago

codgercoder 13y ago
I wonder if this means I can buy a product from someone that, unbeknownst to me, violates a patent, and the patent holder can come after me.
- OGinparadise 13y ago
  Not come after you but maybe make you stop using it.
  - alyandon 13y ago
    There are no free passes like that in the US patent system as far as I'm aware. You don't have to knowingly infringe a patent to be taken to court by a patent holder and potentially held liable for patent infringement.
    - OGinparadise 13y ago
      Maybe, but they sue a few here and there to send a message, not everyone doing it.
      - alyandon 13y ago
        True, that's usually the case. However, it is still entirely up to the whim of the entity asserting a patent claim (rightly or wrongly) as to whether or not you end up with a very large legal bill. That's a huge amount of liability and personally it terrifies me.
        OGinparadise 13y ago
        OK, that's true but in this case, he almost certainly knew what he bought, as stated on the SCOTUS ruling.
- jwcooper 13y ago
  I'm not a fan of patenting genes in seeds, but in this case he knew that some of the seeds he was buying contained Monsanto seeds, but figured since he was a small fish in a big pond that Monsanto wouldn't mind. In Monsanto's view, they need to protect their investments in R&D. From the article: Starting in 1999, he bought some ordinary soybeans from a small grain elevator where local farmers drop off their harvest. ... He knew that these beans probably had Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene in them, because that's mainly what farmers plant these days. But Bowman didn't think Monsanto controlled these soybeans anymore, and in any case, he was getting a motley collection of different varieties, hardly a threat to Monsanto's seed business. 'I couldn't imagine that they'd give a rat's behind,' " he said.
  - SageRaven 13y ago
    Many folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law: the guy at one time signed something with Monsanto stating his exclusive source of RR soybeans would be Monsanto. However, if I buy 160 acres of land, and plant that land in soybeans from a non-Monsanto granary with some RR seed in it, then how could I be culpable if I had no dealings at all with Monsanto? I am guessing a case wouldn't be a straight 9-0 SCOTUS ruling.
    - pdabbadabba 13y ago
      "Many folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law" Those people are wrong. Monsanto did, indeed, sue him for patent infringement, not breach of contract. The contract mentioned in the case is just his license to grow the plants from Monsanto. He was forbidden from replanting those soybeans (or other patented soybeans) by patent law because such actions exceeded the scope of his license. There is nothing at all in the opinion that refers to a contract where he agreed only to buy RR soybeans from Monsanto.
      - SageRaven 13y ago
        Point taken. But it still seems he had a direct relationship (the license). My point still stands. If I, having no relation whatsoever with Monsanto, buy random soybeans as feed, then plant them, then spray them with Roundup to weed out the non-Monsanto seeds, then save the seeds selected for resistance, I believe that the Court would not have made such an "easy" 9-0 decision, assuming they tried to sue me at all (rather than the granary or someone else). The intuitive purpose of the patent protection for RR seeds seems to be preventing a different genetic research firm from creating a similar seed and also selling "Roundup-Ready Seeds" -- not preventing some random Joe who selects some unidentified seed stock for resistance to Roundup to better his yields. The fact that we should all know there may be Monsanto seeds in the mix is (or should be) irrelevant. So it seems to me that we're still waiting for a "real" case that deals 100% with the genetics and patents.
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  Yes. I've heard (here, I think) of patent trolls that prefer to go after customers rather than producers of whatever is supposedly infringing, because it's easier to convince the smaller customers to settle out of court rather than fighting and getting the patents declared invalid.
- jlarocco 13y ago
  I don't think your question can be answered from this case. The farmer here had signed an agreement with Monsanto, and knew the second hand seeds he was buying were covered by Monsanto's patent. If the farmer had never signed an agreement with Monsanto the case may have turned out differently.
ryanmerket 13y ago
This is really scary...
- splawn 13y ago
  ...only if you are a farmer knowingly planting unlicensed monsanto seed in your field with the hopes that the patent wouldn't hold up in court.
  - hga 13y ago
    And after you signed a contract agreeing not to do that.... 9-0 decisions are easy when the facts of a case are so clear cut.
  - nav270 13y ago
    What's interesting in this case is that, in my opinion, the Court ruled correctly; the problem isn't the courts ruling. It's the fact that the law is the way it is: perhaps organism patents should be legal, but the Monsanto situation seems to be a gross exploitation of the current system. Under the current law, yes, the farmer was in the wrong. It just seems like the current law might need to be changed.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Which is inevitable if you have a non-Monsanto farm near a Monsanto farm. It's scary.
  - specialist 13y ago
    How is the farmer supposed to source non-Monsanto seeds? How would he verify that seeds were from Monsanto or not?
mjt0229 13y ago
I wonder if this says anything about the ruling we can expect from the court on the Myriad Genetics case. The New York Times summary implied that the farmer in question had some knowledge that he was using seeds in a way that might infringe, if you buy the argument that organisms can be patented. I don't love that argument, but the possibility of knowing infringement complects the case somewhat. However, I'm somewhat comforted by the expressed limitation in the ruling, that it pertains to this case only. In the end, I can't say I'm informed enough to defend my opinion on this case, but I have to say that I'm disappointed.
- bostonpete 13y ago
  > In the end, I can't say I'm informed enough to defend my opinion on this case, but I have to say that I'm disappointed. I agree whole-heartedly. I don't like the makeup of the court, dislike everything I've ever heard about Monsanto, and have serious reservations about patented organisms. Even so, I have a hard time impugning any unanimous ruling by SCOTUS.
  - mjt0229 13y ago
    Yeah. I wonder if this was not the right test case.
    - Shivetya 13y ago
      Considering the agreement he had signed if anything it was an interesting attempt to vacate that agreement. As in, he attempted the "Patent exhaustion" (first sale) as a means to circumvent paying to use a product. Since there are patent unencumbered varieties available I think its a good decision. edit: read the NYT article which has further comments by the court, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/monsanto-victorious-in-genetic-seed-case.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/monsanto-victorio...
    - trothoun 13y ago
      In this case, he sprayed the crop grown from the seed bought from the grain elevator with roundup. This is how everyone knew that it was in fact roundup ready. It would be interesting to see a case where The seed were used as if they were conventional soybeans, especially if the farmer didn't know that they contained patented genes. According to my (inexpert) reading of the opinion, it wouldn't matter and the result would have been the same. But maybe there are other defenses that could have been employed if the facts were different. Certainly the policy argument would look a lot different, even if the legal argument remained the same.
grecy 13y ago
Interesting to see the diverging paths being taken by America and a ton of developed countries, where Monsanto has been removed and banned (Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, South Australia, Russia, France, and Switzerland)
EGreg 13y ago
IP is one of the last economic sectors where the US has a commanding lead. Of course the US government is going to strongly protect IP, and seek more trade agreements around the world to respects its IP, because otherwise its trading deficit would unravel faster and wages in the US would be rapidly depressed towards the average in the world: $75 a day (for official wage earners ... for many people in the world it's more like $2 a day). Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17512040 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17512040 In turn this would probably lower the demand for US dollars, as the US government would be getting less revenue in $ from the working class whereas the investor class would probably diversify more around the world. The funny thing is that, even as the US pushes for more countries to work with it to enforce IP (such as the crackdown on MegaUpload), it doesn't enforce many trademarks from other countries: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/04/12/foods-biggest-scam-the-great-kobe-beef-lie/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/04/12/foods-bi...
- jbooth 13y ago
  I don't think you understand how IP works. You think that in a national security sense, our IP laws keep our economy ahead of other countries? What, they're bound by those laws?
  - pdabbadabba 13y ago
    In many (though far from all) cases, the answer is actually "yes, they are." By treaty.
  - alexqgb 13y ago
    They are if the cited trade agreements go through. That's the whole point of these agreements. Indeed, it may be you who doesn't understand how IP works. When rights holders try to get IP rules tied up in international trade agreements it's because they want to make it that much harder for signatory nations to modify IP law. This is an important line of defense in cases where the rules are protecting companies that are widely seen as abusive (e.g. Monsanto), since nations that turn against them not only have to pass new legislation, they also have to disengage from international treaties. That extra layer of complication can add years of profitability to highly unpopular schemes.
droithomme 13y ago
The most interesting part about this was that it was 9-0.
- ajross 13y ago
  If I'm reading it (the article, not the decision; IANAL, etc...) correctly, it was decided pretty much as a straightforward contract issue. He had a signed contract with Monsanto not to plant that breed via anything but purchased-from-Monsanto seeds. He tried to get around it by buying and planting bulk soybeans bought from the market. The court said no, that's not OK. Nowhere did there seem to be a serious issue about the reach of patent law or the breadth of Monsanto's IP.
  - pdabbadabba 13y ago
    I don't believe you're reading it correctly. (IAAL). Yes, he had a license that allowed him to grow the crop, but that does not change the fact that Monsanto was suing him for patent infringement, not breach of contract. Typically when you exceed the scope of your license, the appropriate cause of action if for infringement, not breach of contract. The idea is that all the license does is to grant permission to do x where it would otherwise be prohibited by law. X here is to grow a crop but not replant the seeds harvested from it. There is no need to go farther in the contract and prohibit replanting because the premise of the license agreement is that everything not covered by the agreement is already illegal ex ante.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
LanceH 13y ago
I'm always curious about one detail in these cases. There is only a real benefit if they're using Roundup, right? Are they also under agreement when they purchase the pesticides?
ricree 13y ago
The Supreme Court only takes on a fraction of the cases that appeal to them. Given the 9-0 ruling and seemingly clearcut contract situation, does anyone know why they chose to take this case in the first place?
- pdabbadabba 13y ago
  Because it answers the question whether replanting the seeds of a patented GMO plant counts as a permissible use under the patent exhaustion doctrine or whether it's patent infringement. Absent this ruling, a court might have concluded that harvesting and replanting was such a typical use of a plant that it could not constitute patent infringement. (Also, what's the clear-cut contract situation? I don't think there is one in this case.)
gnoway 13y ago
This is disappointing but not at all unexpected. Monsanto is sitting on a 'terminator' capability that allows them to make second-generations seeds sterile. They don't use it, obviously, but wouldn't it be better for consumers if they did? - Farmers still have to buy seeds every year - Farmers do not have to worry about cross pollination - Farmers do not have to fear second-hand seeds (this case) - Seed washers do not have to fear lawsuit + no volume, only no volume - Monsanto can stop suing everyone What am I missing, other than Monsanto leaving the door open so they can strengthen their position through the courts like this?
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  You might not be able to directly plant a second gen Monsanto seed if they used the terminator, but what happens with a hybrid? Seems like something that would get out of hand.
- D9u 13y ago
  Monsanto is sitting on a 'terminator' capability that allows them to make second-generations seeds sterile. They don't use it, obviously, but wouldn't it be better for consumers if they did? It would be disastrous if the "terminator" gene ended up cross pollinating neighboring crops resulting in all subsequent cultivars being contaminated with "terminator" genes...
D9u 13y ago
Absolutely disgusting!!! The very notion of "copyright" being applied to life forms is the antithesis of freedom. A clear case of government, of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation. The People be damned! Soybeans are living beings, and have been around longer than Monsanto, and the US government, combined. As such, humanity in general should claim infringement of our unalienable right to cultivate whichever seeds we find upon the face of the Earth, without fear of prosecution by multi-national corporate interests.
- jlarocco 13y ago
  I haven't thought about it enough to decide whether I'm for or against patenting genetic modifications. That said, the farmer in this case knew what he was getting into when he signed up with Monsanto. He obviously supports the concept because he was buying patented, modified seeds from Monsanto. He signed the contract with them, then he broke his end of the deal. It seems like an open and shut case.
  - D9u 13y ago
    He didn't purchase the offending seeds from Monsanto, so he should not have to pay Monsanto, the people who sold him the contaminated seeds are at fault.
    - jlarocco 13y ago
      But he signed a contract saying he would only buy the modified seeds from Monsanto and their resellers. He explicitly agreed not to do what he did. If it were a third party farmer who hadn't signed a contract with Monsanto then this case would be completely outrageous. But that's not what happened. I don't think the case is about the seeds as much as everybody has made it out to be. He previously signed a contract limiting the ways he could acquire modified seeds, and he broke the contract.
grellas 13y ago
A few thoughts on this case: The farmer here knew of Monsanto's license by which you could buy their genetically-altered (patented) seeds for the purpose of planting one crop only and selling that crop, with the need each year to buy more of the patented seeds from Monsanto directly or from one of its authorized resellers and with a specific prohibition on any form of replanting. Each year, he routinely bought these seeds and planted them in accordance with the license restrictions for his primary crop. For his secondary crop each year for eight years running, though, he bought seeds generically on resale from a grain elevator, planted them in a such a way as to isolate which parts of the resulting crop were from the Monsanto seeds, and, through a continual culling process, regularly wound up planting these Monsanto seeds for an 8-year period so as to get the benefits of the patented seeds without having to buy them from Monsanto or a Monsanto dealer. When he got sued over this, he argued that the "bean did it" by claiming that he did not himself "make" or "create" an infringing product so as to infringe Monsanto's patent but rather forces of nature over which he had no control created the new product, thereby absolving him for any responsibility for infringement. People often mock the law for its occasional absurdities and for its bone-crushing processes, and rightly so. But most U.S. law at its core is grounded in sound principles that make a lot of sense, and the case here represents one such instance. Granting the premise of patent laws that an inventor is to have monopoly protection for a prescribed period in order to profit from his invention, it makes perfect sense that the patent exhaustion doctrine should not be interpreted such that, after but a single sale of the product that benefits the patent holder, others can simply make copies of the product for sale or use directly and without compensating the patent holder in any way. Now, some may support such an outcome in the name of sticking a thumb in the eye of patent holders but, given that U.S. courts do not have a mission to subvert the patent laws and instead seek to uphold them as the law of the land, those courts cannot really abide such a result. Instead, they will say that the farmer's argument here that the "bean did it" is pure sophistry and a way of subverting the plain purpose of the law. That is exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court did here. And that is why it was unanimous. By legal standards, it really was not a close call. In the words of the Court: "In the case at hand, Bowman planted Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct." All that said, the court was very careful to note that its ruling does not in any way apply to all forms of self-replicating product: "We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose." Thus, the ruling was not a knee-jerk upholding of maximum protection for the patent laws. The court seems more than ready to keep an open mind when it comes to changing technology. It simply was not ready to give sanction to a clever interpretation of law that would have undercut the very fundamentals of why the law existed in the first place.
protomyth 13y ago
For those that want to read the ruling: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf or hear the oral arguments: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-796 http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_de...
yaddayadda 13y ago
With the outrage over Monsanto's patenting, why have we not had a kickstarter to develop an "opensource" alternative to roundup resistant seeds? (ala http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plan... )
harshreality 13y ago
This decision rests on the common, but arbitrary view that different generations of organisms are different things, when they can instead be viewed as all the same entity. Of course, that view is not very popular, and would completely destroy any hope of collecting meaningful royalties from non-sterile genetically modified organisms. This unanimous decision by SCOTUS shows a sickening lack of appreciation for the complexity of the problem. We need more creative and forward-thinking people interpreting our laws.
brownbat 13y ago
I don't see this case as determining the patent eligibility of biological material generally, nor about answering what happens if patented seed contaminates your field. I feel those issues are driving interest in Monsanto cases, but this isn't one of them. I'll take a stab at explaining why this was a really boring case. Roughly, the law allows you to use a patented object as you see fit, that's the "exhaustion doctrine." Patents aren't a full license that controls every aspect of the owners use of an object, it just prevents copying. Well, ok, what if typical use of the object makes a new copy? Here, the patented object is a seed, where its main inherent function is self-duplication. You could use it for other things, as filler for bean bag chairs, as fuel for a massive fire, as feed, whatever. But the main thing seeds do is reproduce themselves. So does the exhaustion doctrine apply? No. The patent system is mainly a DO NOT COPY law. It's not mainly a USE THINGS YOU OWN law. The exhaustion doctrine is an artifact, a patch, to keep DO NOT COPY from getting out of hand. It should surprise no one what when asked if the DO NOT COPY law means DO NOT COPY, that SCOTUS should reply, "Why, yes, it means exactly that." I'm not a huge fan of the way Monsanto has aggressively leveraged bio patents against some farmers. Hell, I'm skeptical of the economic utility of state granted monopolies in general. But this case was never realistically addressing any of that. We had a knowing infringer, so none of the most abusive practices. The broader bio patent theories are very well established. (This isn't SCOTUS's first time at the bio patent rodeo.) The case was a "could you repeat your definition?" "Sure, here's that same definition."

54 points by zacharyvoase 13y ago

I wonder if this means I can buy a product from someone that, unbeknownst to me, violates a patent, and the patent holder can come after me.

OGinparadise 13y ago
Not come after you but maybe make you stop using it.
- alyandon 13y ago
  There are no free passes like that in the US patent system as far as I'm aware. You don't have to knowingly infringe a patent to be taken to court by a patent holder and potentially held liable for patent infringement.
  - OGinparadise 13y ago
    Maybe, but they sue a few here and there to send a message, not everyone doing it.
    - alyandon 13y ago
      True, that's usually the case. However, it is still entirely up to the whim of the entity asserting a patent claim (rightly or wrongly) as to whether or not you end up with a very large legal bill. That's a huge amount of liability and personally it terrifies me.
      - OGinparadise 13y ago
        OK, that's true but in this case, he almost certainly knew what he bought, as stated on the SCOTUS ruling.
jwcooper 13y ago
I'm not a fan of patenting genes in seeds, but in this case he knew that some of the seeds he was buying contained Monsanto seeds, but figured since he was a small fish in a big pond that Monsanto wouldn't mind. In Monsanto's view, they need to protect their investments in R&D. From the article: Starting in 1999, he bought some ordinary soybeans from a small grain elevator where local farmers drop off their harvest. ... He knew that these beans probably had Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene in them, because that's mainly what farmers plant these days. But Bowman didn't think Monsanto controlled these soybeans anymore, and in any case, he was getting a motley collection of different varieties, hardly a threat to Monsanto's seed business. 'I couldn't imagine that they'd give a rat's behind,' " he said.
- SageRaven 13y ago
  Many folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law: the guy at one time signed something with Monsanto stating his exclusive source of RR soybeans would be Monsanto. However, if I buy 160 acres of land, and plant that land in soybeans from a non-Monsanto granary with some RR seed in it, then how could I be culpable if I had no dealings at all with Monsanto? I am guessing a case wouldn't be a straight 9-0 SCOTUS ruling.
  - pdabbadabba 13y ago
    "Many folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law" Those people are wrong. Monsanto did, indeed, sue him for patent infringement, not breach of contract. The contract mentioned in the case is just his license to grow the plants from Monsanto. He was forbidden from replanting those soybeans (or other patented soybeans) by patent law because such actions exceeded the scope of his license. There is nothing at all in the opinion that refers to a contract where he agreed only to buy RR soybeans from Monsanto.
    - SageRaven 13y ago
      Point taken. But it still seems he had a direct relationship (the license). My point still stands. If I, having no relation whatsoever with Monsanto, buy random soybeans as feed, then plant them, then spray them with Roundup to weed out the non-Monsanto seeds, then save the seeds selected for resistance, I believe that the Court would not have made such an "easy" 9-0 decision, assuming they tried to sue me at all (rather than the granary or someone else). The intuitive purpose of the patent protection for RR seeds seems to be preventing a different genetic research firm from creating a similar seed and also selling "Roundup-Ready Seeds" -- not preventing some random Joe who selects some unidentified seed stock for resistance to Roundup to better his yields. The fact that we should all know there may be Monsanto seeds in the mix is (or should be) irrelevant. So it seems to me that we're still waiting for a "real" case that deals 100% with the genetics and patents.
tbrownaw 13y ago
Yes. I've heard (here, I think) of patent trolls that prefer to go after customers rather than producers of whatever is supposedly infringing, because it's easier to convince the smaller customers to settle out of court rather than fighting and getting the patents declared invalid.
jlarocco 13y ago
I don't think your question can be answered from this case. The farmer here had signed an agreement with Monsanto, and knew the second hand seeds he was buying were covered by Monsanto's patent. If the farmer had never signed an agreement with Monsanto the case may have turned out differently.

ryanmerket 13y ago

This is really scary...

splawn 13y ago
...only if you are a farmer knowingly planting unlicensed monsanto seed in your field with the hopes that the patent wouldn't hold up in court.
- hga 13y ago
  And after you signed a contract agreeing not to do that.... 9-0 decisions are easy when the facts of a case are so clear cut.
- nav270 13y ago
  What's interesting in this case is that, in my opinion, the Court ruled correctly; the problem isn't the courts ruling. It's the fact that the law is the way it is: perhaps organism patents should be legal, but the Monsanto situation seems to be a gross exploitation of the current system. Under the current law, yes, the farmer was in the wrong. It just seems like the current law might need to be changed.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Which is inevitable if you have a non-Monsanto farm near a Monsanto farm. It's scary.
- specialist 13y ago
  How is the farmer supposed to source non-Monsanto seeds? How would he verify that seeds were from Monsanto or not?

mjt0229 13y ago

I wonder if this says anything about the ruling we can expect from the court on the Myriad Genetics case. The New York Times summary implied that the farmer in question had some knowledge that he was using seeds in a way that might infringe, if you buy the argument that organisms can be patented. I don't love that argument, but the possibility of knowing infringement complects the case somewhat. However, I'm somewhat comforted by the expressed limitation in the ruling, that it pertains to this case only. In the end, I can't say I'm informed enough to defend my opinion on this case, but I have to say that I'm disappointed.

bostonpete 13y ago
> In the end, I can't say I'm informed enough to defend my opinion on this case, but I have to say that I'm disappointed. I agree whole-heartedly. I don't like the makeup of the court, dislike everything I've ever heard about Monsanto, and have serious reservations about patented organisms. Even so, I have a hard time impugning any unanimous ruling by SCOTUS.
- mjt0229 13y ago
  Yeah. I wonder if this was not the right test case.
  - Shivetya 13y ago
    Considering the agreement he had signed if anything it was an interesting attempt to vacate that agreement. As in, he attempted the "Patent exhaustion" (first sale) as a means to circumvent paying to use a product. Since there are patent unencumbered varieties available I think its a good decision. edit: read the NYT article which has further comments by the court, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/monsanto-victorious-in-genetic-seed-case.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/monsanto-victorio...
  - trothoun 13y ago
    In this case, he sprayed the crop grown from the seed bought from the grain elevator with roundup. This is how everyone knew that it was in fact roundup ready. It would be interesting to see a case where The seed were used as if they were conventional soybeans, especially if the farmer didn't know that they contained patented genes. According to my (inexpert) reading of the opinion, it wouldn't matter and the result would have been the same. But maybe there are other defenses that could have been employed if the facts were different. Certainly the policy argument would look a lot different, even if the legal argument remained the same.

grecy 13y ago

Interesting to see the diverging paths being taken by America and a ton of developed countries, where Monsanto has been removed and banned (Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, South Australia, Russia, France, and Switzerland)

EGreg 13y ago

IP is one of the last economic sectors where the US has a commanding lead. Of course the US government is going to strongly protect IP, and seek more trade agreements around the world to respects its IP, because otherwise its trading deficit would unravel faster and wages in the US would be rapidly depressed towards the average in the world: $75 a day (for official wage earners ... for many people in the world it's more like $2 a day). Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17512040 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17512040 In turn this would probably lower the demand for US dollars, as the US government would be getting less revenue in $ from the working class whereas the investor class would probably diversify more around the world. The funny thing is that, even as the US pushes for more countries to work with it to enforce IP (such as the crackdown on MegaUpload), it doesn't enforce many trademarks from other countries: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/04/12/foods-biggest-scam-the-great-kobe-beef-lie/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/04/12/foods-bi...

jbooth 13y ago
I don't think you understand how IP works. You think that in a national security sense, our IP laws keep our economy ahead of other countries? What, they're bound by those laws?
- pdabbadabba 13y ago
  In many (though far from all) cases, the answer is actually "yes, they are." By treaty.
- alexqgb 13y ago
  They are if the cited trade agreements go through. That's the whole point of these agreements. Indeed, it may be you who doesn't understand how IP works. When rights holders try to get IP rules tied up in international trade agreements it's because they want to make it that much harder for signatory nations to modify IP law. This is an important line of defense in cases where the rules are protecting companies that are widely seen as abusive (e.g. Monsanto), since nations that turn against them not only have to pass new legislation, they also have to disengage from international treaties. That extra layer of complication can add years of profitability to highly unpopular schemes.

droithomme 13y ago

The most interesting part about this was that it was 9-0.

ajross 13y ago
If I'm reading it (the article, not the decision; IANAL, etc...) correctly, it was decided pretty much as a straightforward contract issue. He had a signed contract with Monsanto not to plant that breed via anything but purchased-from-Monsanto seeds. He tried to get around it by buying and planting bulk soybeans bought from the market. The court said no, that's not OK. Nowhere did there seem to be a serious issue about the reach of patent law or the breadth of Monsanto's IP.
- pdabbadabba 13y ago
  I don't believe you're reading it correctly. (IAAL). Yes, he had a license that allowed him to grow the crop, but that does not change the fact that Monsanto was suing him for patent infringement, not breach of contract. Typically when you exceed the scope of your license, the appropriate cause of action if for infringement, not breach of contract. The idea is that all the license does is to grant permission to do x where it would otherwise be prohibited by law. X here is to grow a crop but not replant the seeds harvested from it. There is no need to go farther in the contract and prohibit replanting because the premise of the license agreement is that everything not covered by the agreement is already illegal ex ante.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

LanceH 13y ago

I'm always curious about one detail in these cases. There is only a real benefit if they're using Roundup, right? Are they also under agreement when they purchase the pesticides?

ricree 13y ago

The Supreme Court only takes on a fraction of the cases that appeal to them. Given the 9-0 ruling and seemingly clearcut contract situation, does anyone know why they chose to take this case in the first place?

pdabbadabba 13y ago
Because it answers the question whether replanting the seeds of a patented GMO plant counts as a permissible use under the patent exhaustion doctrine or whether it's patent infringement. Absent this ruling, a court might have concluded that harvesting and replanting was such a typical use of a plant that it could not constitute patent infringement. (Also, what's the clear-cut contract situation? I don't think there is one in this case.)

gnoway 13y ago

This is disappointing but not at all unexpected. Monsanto is sitting on a 'terminator' capability that allows them to make second-generations seeds sterile. They don't use it, obviously, but wouldn't it be better for consumers if they did? - Farmers still have to buy seeds every year - Farmers do not have to worry about cross pollination - Farmers do not have to fear second-hand seeds (this case) - Seed washers do not have to fear lawsuit + no volume, only no volume - Monsanto can stop suing everyone What am I missing, other than Monsanto leaving the door open so they can strengthen their position through the courts like this?

DigitalJack 13y ago
You might not be able to directly plant a second gen Monsanto seed if they used the terminator, but what happens with a hybrid? Seems like something that would get out of hand.
D9u 13y ago
Monsanto is sitting on a 'terminator' capability that allows them to make second-generations seeds sterile. They don't use it, obviously, but wouldn't it be better for consumers if they did? It would be disastrous if the "terminator" gene ended up cross pollinating neighboring crops resulting in all subsequent cultivars being contaminated with "terminator" genes...

D9u 13y ago

Absolutely disgusting!!! The very notion of "copyright" being applied to life forms is the antithesis of freedom. A clear case of government, of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation. The People be damned! Soybeans are living beings, and have been around longer than Monsanto, and the US government, combined. As such, humanity in general should claim infringement of our unalienable right to cultivate whichever seeds we find upon the face of the Earth, without fear of prosecution by multi-national corporate interests.

jlarocco 13y ago
I haven't thought about it enough to decide whether I'm for or against patenting genetic modifications. That said, the farmer in this case knew what he was getting into when he signed up with Monsanto. He obviously supports the concept because he was buying patented, modified seeds from Monsanto. He signed the contract with them, then he broke his end of the deal. It seems like an open and shut case.
- D9u 13y ago
  He didn't purchase the offending seeds from Monsanto, so he should not have to pay Monsanto, the people who sold him the contaminated seeds are at fault.
  - jlarocco 13y ago
    But he signed a contract saying he would only buy the modified seeds from Monsanto and their resellers. He explicitly agreed not to do what he did. If it were a third party farmer who hadn't signed a contract with Monsanto then this case would be completely outrageous. But that's not what happened. I don't think the case is about the seeds as much as everybody has made it out to be. He previously signed a contract limiting the ways he could acquire modified seeds, and he broke the contract.

grellas 13y ago

A few thoughts on this case: The farmer here knew of Monsanto's license by which you could buy their genetically-altered (patented) seeds for the purpose of planting one crop only and selling that crop, with the need each year to buy more of the patented seeds from Monsanto directly or from one of its authorized resellers and with a specific prohibition on any form of replanting. Each year, he routinely bought these seeds and planted them in accordance with the license restrictions for his primary crop. For his secondary crop each year for eight years running, though, he bought seeds generically on resale from a grain elevator, planted them in a such a way as to isolate which parts of the resulting crop were from the Monsanto seeds, and, through a continual culling process, regularly wound up planting these Monsanto seeds for an 8-year period so as to get the benefits of the patented seeds without having to buy them from Monsanto or a Monsanto dealer. When he got sued over this, he argued that the "bean did it" by claiming that he did not himself "make" or "create" an infringing product so as to infringe Monsanto's patent but rather forces of nature over which he had no control created the new product, thereby absolving him for any responsibility for infringement. People often mock the law for its occasional absurdities and for its bone-crushing processes, and rightly so. But most U.S. law at its core is grounded in sound principles that make a lot of sense, and the case here represents one such instance. Granting the premise of patent laws that an inventor is to have monopoly protection for a prescribed period in order to profit from his invention, it makes perfect sense that the patent exhaustion doctrine should not be interpreted such that, after but a single sale of the product that benefits the patent holder, others can simply make copies of the product for sale or use directly and without compensating the patent holder in any way. Now, some may support such an outcome in the name of sticking a thumb in the eye of patent holders but, given that U.S. courts do not have a mission to subvert the patent laws and instead seek to uphold them as the law of the land, those courts cannot really abide such a result. Instead, they will say that the farmer's argument here that the "bean did it" is pure sophistry and a way of subverting the plain purpose of the law. That is exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court did here. And that is why it was unanimous. By legal standards, it really was not a close call. In the words of the Court: "In the case at hand, Bowman planted Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct." All that said, the court was very careful to note that its ruling does not in any way apply to all forms of self-replicating product: "We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose." Thus, the ruling was not a knee-jerk upholding of maximum protection for the patent laws. The court seems more than ready to keep an open mind when it comes to changing technology. It simply was not ready to give sanction to a clever interpretation of law that would have undercut the very fundamentals of why the law existed in the first place.

protomyth 13y ago

For those that want to read the ruling: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf or hear the oral arguments: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-796 http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_de...

yaddayadda 13y ago

With the outrage over Monsanto's patenting, why have we not had a kickstarter to develop an "opensource" alternative to roundup resistant seeds? (ala http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plan... )

harshreality 13y ago

This decision rests on the common, but arbitrary view that different generations of organisms are different things, when they can instead be viewed as all the same entity. Of course, that view is not very popular, and would completely destroy any hope of collecting meaningful royalties from non-sterile genetically modified organisms. This unanimous decision by SCOTUS shows a sickening lack of appreciation for the complexity of the problem. We need more creative and forward-thinking people interpreting our laws.

brownbat 13y ago

I don't see this case as determining the patent eligibility of biological material generally, nor about answering what happens if patented seed contaminates your field. I feel those issues are driving interest in Monsanto cases, but this isn't one of them. I'll take a stab at explaining why this was a really boring case. Roughly, the law allows you to use a patented object as you see fit, that's the "exhaustion doctrine." Patents aren't a full license that controls every aspect of the owners use of an object, it just prevents copying. Well, ok, what if typical use of the object makes a new copy? Here, the patented object is a seed, where its main inherent function is self-duplication. You could use it for other things, as filler for bean bag chairs, as fuel for a massive fire, as feed, whatever. But the main thing seeds do is reproduce themselves. So does the exhaustion doctrine apply? No. The patent system is mainly a DO NOT COPY law. It's not mainly a USE THINGS YOU OWN law. The exhaustion doctrine is an artifact, a patch, to keep DO NOT COPY from getting out of hand. It should surprise no one what when asked if the DO NOT COPY law means DO NOT COPY, that SCOTUS should reply, "Why, yes, it means exactly that." I'm not a huge fan of the way Monsanto has aggressively leveraged bio patents against some farmers. Hell, I'm skeptical of the economic utility of state granted monopolies in general. But this case was never realistically addressing any of that. We had a knowing infringer, so none of the most abusive practices. The broader bio patent theories are very well established. (This isn't SCOTUS's first time at the bio patent rodeo.) The case was a "could you repeat your definition?" "Sure, here's that same definition."