4 ms·

> which they are not given that there is a billion years of prior art I'm not a Monsanto supporter by any means, but there is no prior-art for a tailor-made or

by vivin 13y ago

> which they are not given that there is a billion years of prior art I'm not a Monsanto supporter by any means, but there is no prior-art for a tailor-made organism, is there? The genetically-modified version of the Monsanto soybean has no prior-art. Unless you consider all soybeans as prior-art.

D9u 13y ago
Yes, all soybeans are prior art by virtue of countless generations of selective cultivation by unincorporated humans which has resulted in the soybean which Monsanto has modified in their quest for profit and market domination.
- dnautics 13y ago
  yes, but monsanto is not claiming a patent on all soybeans.
  - D9u 13y ago
    And the farmer in this case didn't buy the offending seed from Monsanto, yet here we are...
  - dnautics 13y ago
    No, D9u, by planting the patented seeds, the farmer has made himself a manufacturer of the patented seeds. Again, I don't personally believe that we should have patent protection on anything, but it's rather clear that this is exactly what patents protect against. The exahustion of the patents upon first sale merely means that the patentholder cannot exercise any attempts at controlling resale of the original item. The second generation of seeds is not the original item. An analogy would be as such: You buy a computer chip. Exhaustion means that the patentholder cannot restrict you from breaking it open and examining the chip with a microscope, or even making a clone that presents the same API to the pinset, or reselling the original chip without compensation to the original manufacturer. What would be against the law, though, would be to take the knowledge you get from the chip, make a copy of large sections of it, and then resell this.
msandford 13y ago
The problem here is that the patentability covers even extraction methods. You find a gene in a plant, you come up with a way to extract it and now you "own" that gene. Even though you didn't discover it nor make it or anything. If the patents ONLY covered tailor made genetics I might find it a bit less onerous but the patentability is VERY broad. Also they didn't tailor-make the organism. They took a "regular" soybean and added some resistance to it. Had they invented a monsanto bean from scratch that had the resistance then sure. Furthermore there are people who are infringing on Monsantos patents by virtue of Monsanto soybeans freely and openly spreading their genetic material through the air. Imagine if the reprap people had designed their printer to be 3d printed (which they did) and then patented it and tried to sue people for using their reprap to 3d print the parts for another reprap. Pretty shitty huh? Now imagine that the reprap came pre-configured to print reprap parts and as soon as you plugged it in it started making them. Along with a note that said "look this printer is going to print parts and there's nothing that can be done about it. But if you want to use those parts, you have to send us a check for $500" Why does something that's utterly ridiculous in one domain seem perfectly acceptable in another?
- pdabbadabba 13y ago
  FYI, this opinion explicitly does not cover a situation where a farmer plants a patented seed accidentally.
- vivin 13y ago
  > The problem here is that the patentability covers even extraction methods. You find a gene in a plant, you come up with a way to extract it and now you "own" that gene. Even though you didn't discover it nor make it or anything. If the patents ONLY covered tailor made genetics I might find it a bit less onerous but the patentability is VERY broad. I was talking about the latter (owning a modified gene), but I completely agree that it is ridiculous to "own" a gene just because you were able to identify and extract it. I recall many years ago there was a row when a bunch of biotech firms were trying to patent the genome for Basmati rice and Turmeric. The Indian government was not happy because there were native plants and it would be ridiculous to pay licensing fees to some biotech firms in the US to grow plants that were native to the country.

by vivin 13y ago

D9u 13y ago

Yes, all soybeans are prior art by virtue of countless generations of selective cultivation by unincorporated humans which has resulted in the soybean which Monsanto has modified in their quest for profit and market domination.

dnautics 13y ago
yes, but monsanto is not claiming a patent on all soybeans.
- D9u 13y ago
  And the farmer in this case didn't buy the offending seed from Monsanto, yet here we are...
- dnautics 13y ago
  No, D9u, by planting the patented seeds, the farmer has made himself a manufacturer of the patented seeds. Again, I don't personally believe that we should have patent protection on anything, but it's rather clear that this is exactly what patents protect against. The exahustion of the patents upon first sale merely means that the patentholder cannot exercise any attempts at controlling resale of the original item. The second generation of seeds is not the original item. An analogy would be as such: You buy a computer chip. Exhaustion means that the patentholder cannot restrict you from breaking it open and examining the chip with a microscope, or even making a clone that presents the same API to the pinset, or reselling the original chip without compensation to the original manufacturer. What would be against the law, though, would be to take the knowledge you get from the chip, make a copy of large sections of it, and then resell this.

msandford 13y ago

The problem here is that the patentability covers even extraction methods. You find a gene in a plant, you come up with a way to extract it and now you "own" that gene. Even though you didn't discover it nor make it or anything. If the patents ONLY covered tailor made genetics I might find it a bit less onerous but the patentability is VERY broad. Also they didn't tailor-make the organism. They took a "regular" soybean and added some resistance to it. Had they invented a monsanto bean from scratch that had the resistance then sure. Furthermore there are people who are infringing on Monsantos patents by virtue of Monsanto soybeans freely and openly spreading their genetic material through the air. Imagine if the reprap people had designed their printer to be 3d printed (which they did) and then patented it and tried to sue people for using their reprap to 3d print the parts for another reprap. Pretty shitty huh? Now imagine that the reprap came pre-configured to print reprap parts and as soon as you plugged it in it started making them. Along with a note that said "look this printer is going to print parts and there's nothing that can be done about it. But if you want to use those parts, you have to send us a check for $500" Why does something that's utterly ridiculous in one domain seem perfectly acceptable in another?

pdabbadabba 13y ago
FYI, this opinion explicitly does not cover a situation where a farmer plants a patented seed accidentally.
vivin 13y ago
> The problem here is that the patentability covers even extraction methods. You find a gene in a plant, you come up with a way to extract it and now you "own" that gene. Even though you didn't discover it nor make it or anything. If the patents ONLY covered tailor made genetics I might find it a bit less onerous but the patentability is VERY broad. I was talking about the latter (owning a modified gene), but I completely agree that it is ridiculous to "own" a gene just because you were able to identify and extract it. I recall many years ago there was a row when a bunch of biotech firms were trying to patent the genome for Basmati rice and Turmeric. The Indian government was not happy because there were native plants and it would be ridiculous to pay licensing fees to some biotech firms in the US to grow plants that were native to the country.