8 ms·

Battling the ‘Monsanto law’ in Ghana

46 points by givan 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago
Last night there was a fantastic story about C4 Rice here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365 In one of the comments a user said: "What is the plan to deal with the backlash from uneducated people screaming about how bad GMO is?" If you're wondering why that backlash is as strong as it is look no further than the kind of legal trickery on display here. Monsanto is about as evil as it gets in the corporate arena, just one step below the likes of Bechtel.
- DenisM 12y ago
  It's easy for the farmers to stay out of Monsanto's way - don't use Monsanto seeds, stick to the seeds they have used before Monsanto came about. A law reserving proliferation of GM seeds to inventors is no different than law preserving copyright in software. How can one support the latter and oppose the former?
  - unethical_ban 12y ago
    Until you cross-pollinate with Monsanto's seeds on accident, and they sue you for IP infringement.
    - hga 12y ago
      Can you dig up any cases where this has actually happened, where the farmer hadn't previously signed a contract with Monsanto WRT to those very seeds? Last time I saw a discussion about this on HN, perhaps a year or more ago, no one could. Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff): While many lawsuits involve breach of Monsanto's Technology Agreement, farmers who have not signed this type of contract, but do use the patented seed, can also be found liable for violating Monsanto's patent. That said, Monsanto has stated it will not "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means." The Federal Circuit found that this assurance is binding on Monsanto, so that farmers who do not harvest more than a trace amount of Monsanto's patented crops "lack an essential element of standing" to challenge Monsanto's patents. The closest you can come to that is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser in Canada of course; in this case he selected for Roundup Ready plants, like we discussed in the recent antibiotic resistance discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487) which is not an innocent accident. The end of the Wikipedia Monsanto article notes: "The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘...none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" – in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Let's for the moment assume that Monsanto sticks to its promise and will not sue farmers that have 'slight' (however that is defined) presence of the GMO within their otherwise normal crop. If they use roundup (which farmers tend to do, roundup use preceded roundup ready crops by decades) and the GMO is more resistant to roundup than the regular crop it stands to reason that if the farmer simply saves seed from each crop and replants the next year that after a few cycles the percentage of GMO within that population will no longer be slight. Seems like a long term problem to me.
        skosuri 12y ago
        What? Why would a farmer spray roundup on their crop that's mostly not Roundup resistant? That makes no sense; it makes even less sense to do this season after season.
        hga 12y ago
        It would, in fact, result in so few survivors, unless of course started out in low concentrations, that it would be evidence of mens rea. As long as Monsanto is restricting their legal actions to those with "the intending mind", I'm not worried.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        Roundup resistant crops are much more recent than widespread use of roundup.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        Farmers have been using roundup long before roundup resistant crops came along. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
        skosuri 12y ago
        Yes I know, but not to do what you are implying. Specifically, why would farmers spray their non-GMO corn, soybean, canola, etc with Roundup? It would kill most of their crop/harvest.
    - BillinghamJ 12y ago
      And from what I hear, this happens a LOT.
      - hga 12y ago
        If you hear such, you should be able to provide more than one case like Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser (see my other comment in this subthread), which is the closest I've ever heard. Monsanto is not stupid.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        The answer to that question is here: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/why-does-monsanto-sue-farmers-who-save-seeds.aspx http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/why-does-monsanto-su... In a nutshell, most farmers settle rather than that they go to court. Either because they know they're in the wrong or because they can't afford to take on a corporation the size of Monsanto.
        hga 12y ago
        Indeed. The relevant language: When farmers purchase a patented seed variety, they sign an agreement that they will not save and replant seeds produced from the seed they buy from us.... A very small percentage of farmers do not honor this agreement. Monsanto does become aware, through our own actions or through third-parties, of individuals who are suspected of violating our patents and agreements. Where we do find violations, we are able to settle most of these cases without ever going to trial. That's because a lawsuit will be a slam dunk loss for the farmer. As every lawsuit actually filed has turned out to be. When you sign the contract, you are bound by its terms, you won't be able to get away with claiming ignorance afterwords. I'm curious, you feel very strongly about this. Do you have any farming background? Parents raised on farms? Grew up in a farming region?
        jacquesm 12y ago
        > I'm curious, you feel very strongly about this. Do you have any farming background? Parents raised on farms? Grew up in a farming region? I live in a farming region right now. But that has very little bearing on this, I simply think that there is something inherently wrong about copyright and/or patents on genetic sequences and/or organisms. Several of my close relationships are hip-deep in this subject both on the 'pro' and the 'con' side and my viewpoint is the result of lots of conversations and reading. I feel strongly about it because GMO could be (and possibly will be, see the C4 rice project) a huge benefit but we're actually using them on the international stage as a way to keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us in a way that they can't really refuse and we'll bribe our way there if we have to. See Shell in Africa, Bechtel in Latin America (and Monsanto too for that matter) and so on. It's the new colonialism, now 'roundup ready'.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Please read the article. It's about laws specifically created to stop farmers from saving seeds so they'll have to buy them from 'approved' sources.
    - dionidium 12y ago
      I read the article. I think it's being deliberately obfuscatory. It did not make clear whether the restrictions would apply to all seeds, to a particular group of banked sends, or specifically to GMOs purchased with this provision already in the contract. I suspect the reason they're waxing ambiguous is that it's the latter of that list and they want to make it sound more nefarious than it is.
    - shoyer 12y ago
      Really? The article talks about what external parties think about why these laws are being written, but doesn't any provide any direct evidence. And none of those even talk about "approved" sources.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    Yeah ... I love having the food security of my nation depending on a lawsuit and binding arbitrage against a corporation that has bigger GDP than that of my country. And lets not get into first sale doctrine, resale and seeds bought in good faith. Well ... do viruses have copyright? Because they are the only self replicating software I can think of. Can you link to some legal cases?
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  I had the chance to dive into this issue a few years ago for a school project, and I was shocked by two things: one, the restraint that Monsanto showed when seeking and litigating protections for their products, and two, the aggressive exaggerations and deceptive wording that environmental groups employed to attack Monsanto. Case #1: "Monsanto seeds/pollen from the neighboring farm blew into my farm and Monsanto sued me!" is the line that gets brandied about with regularity by environmental groups. Percy Schmeiser, the farmer in question, used it to launch a political career. It's also a highly selective retelling of the story that completely omits the __only__ part of the story that the courts objected to: upon learning that certain plants on his property contained the Monsanto roundup resistance gene, Schmeiser purposefully cultivated large quantities of these plants and deliberately took advantage of Monsanto's specific addition for commercial gain. The courts were very clear: cultivating the Monsanto Canola without a license was OK, but deliberately taking advantage of roundup resistance without a license was not. How do we know it was deliberate? Because non-Monsanto canola dies when you spray roundup on it. If Percy Schmeiser wasn't aware that he was "pirating" Monsanto crops, spraying his field with roundup would have killed his crop. Analogy: My neighbor downloaded Adobe Illustrator over unsecured wifi and I captured their serial number with a sniffer. Now Adobe is suing me because I used that serial number to register 100 new copies of Illustrator at the graphic design business I own. I claim (and the media reports) that I'm being sued because a serial-number laden wifi signal intruded on my property. After all, it could happen to you too! Case #2: Terminator genes. The way the media / environmental groups reported it: "Monsanto has patented genes which will prevent farmers from re-planting seeds if they can't pay Monsanto's fees! Monsanto's greed will cause poor people to starve!" The way Monsanto reported it: "Monsanto commits to never using terminator genes; we patented them so that we are never forced to use them in order to compete against someone who does." Monsanto has kept to their word. Come on, guys -- it seems a bit thankless to reward Monsanto for good behavior by lying and making it look like bad behavior. Case #3: Seralini's "GMOs cause cancer in rats" study. When we discussed it (the school project was a team project), we agreed that it had some seriously shoddy methodology (if you're teaching about PCA abuse, this paper is a good example). It was retracted shortly thereafter, naturally to cries of "conspiracy!" from environmental groups (and sighs of relief from us). Incidentally, a study reaching the opposite conclusion was recently released using a somewhat larger sample size (N=90,000,000,000 vs N=20). EDIT: clarified the Percy Schmeiser narrative to make it clearer that he knew exactly what he was doing (as was established in court).
shawndrost 12y ago
I'm an environmentalist and a humanitarian, and I want both of these things: 1. Freedom for Ghanaian farmers to plant their traditional crops. 2. Access for Ghanaian farmers to high-yield varietals developed by companies like Monsanto. This article implies that the law makes goal #1 illegal, but if you read closely, it is just an implication, and not an outright statement. My current understanding is that goal #1 is not made illegal by this bill. Does anyone have any contradictory evidence? My understanding of this law is that it adopts US-style IP laws for agriculture, which is a controversial idea. Supporters would say it creates incentives towards goal #2, because it's hard for Monsanto to sell self-reproducing technology at a profit without IP support. Detractors would say that it has other downsides. I don't think the detractors are wrong, but I have a question for anyone that's open to exchange views: If you oppose this law, but support goal #2, what do you think will bring Monsanto into Ghana? I only see three options: a) this law, b) Monsanto writes Ghana off as a loss and sells their unprotectable technology, c) we legally compel Monsanto to write Ghana off as a loss.
- tartuffe78 12y ago
  The issue in the U.S. is that flowering plants seeds travel by wind. So farmer A who bought Monsanto seeds infects farmer Bs field, who then can no longer legally harvest the seeds from field B because they contain Monsanto IP. Not sure if this applies to crops in Ghana, but its true in the US.
  - hga 12y ago
    No, it is not true in the US, which you will learn if you read the rest of this discussion.
- csekwalor 12y ago
  Shawndrost - Id love to run an article related to this on Movemeback.com to engage the action and thoughts of African Diapora in the West. Really didn't expect to come across such content on HN - fantastic.C
bovermyer 12y ago
Could someone please tell me why intellectual property protection should even be a thing?
- hga 12y ago
  So people can make money with their minds, instead of just their hands? Patents, in fields where they make sense (not software, at least not without 1000x better patent offices) are also useful because they require disclosure up front, allowing immediate cross-fertilization, so to speak ^_^ (very important in Silicon Valley's meteoric development of ICs), and a limited life time. Without them, entities resort to trade secrets, which makes everyone indefinitely impoverished, ADDED: including the trade secret holder, because of that lack of cross-fertilization. Note the people once asked this question about land. For farms, in fact....
- skosuri 12y ago
  Why would any commercial entity invest in things like drug development, crop development, etc; if the moment they actually bring something to market it's trivially copied and sold at cost?
  - bovermyer 12y ago
    I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted; it's an honest quesiton. Why does a business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a thing?
    - dionidium 12y ago
      > Why does a business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a thing? That has nothing to do with it. It's a question of incentives. Patent supporters believe that a limited monopoly encourages innovation. That's it.
    - hga 12y ago
      Errr, "a particular implementation of a thing" cannot be patented. It might be copyrightable (in the US, things with no creative content like a telephone book cannot be protected by copyright). GMOs are much more like inventions protectable by patents than creative works, like, say, an artificial form of life based on silicon. Not entirely different in principle than building a machine out of different mostly pre-fab parts, the combination of which is an invention.
paulvs 12y ago
Technically all things have APIs, but some need API keys. http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg

46 points by givan 12y ago

Last night there was a fantastic story about C4 Rice here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365 In one of the comments a user said: "What is the plan to deal with the backlash from uneducated people screaming about how bad GMO is?" If you're wondering why that backlash is as strong as it is look no further than the kind of legal trickery on display here. Monsanto is about as evil as it gets in the corporate arena, just one step below the likes of Bechtel.

DenisM 12y ago
It's easy for the farmers to stay out of Monsanto's way - don't use Monsanto seeds, stick to the seeds they have used before Monsanto came about. A law reserving proliferation of GM seeds to inventors is no different than law preserving copyright in software. How can one support the latter and oppose the former?
- unethical_ban 12y ago
  Until you cross-pollinate with Monsanto's seeds on accident, and they sue you for IP infringement.
  - hga 12y ago
    Can you dig up any cases where this has actually happened, where the farmer hadn't previously signed a contract with Monsanto WRT to those very seeds? Last time I saw a discussion about this on HN, perhaps a year or more ago, no one could. Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff): While many lawsuits involve breach of Monsanto's Technology Agreement, farmers who have not signed this type of contract, but do use the patented seed, can also be found liable for violating Monsanto's patent. That said, Monsanto has stated it will not "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means." The Federal Circuit found that this assurance is binding on Monsanto, so that farmers who do not harvest more than a trace amount of Monsanto's patented crops "lack an essential element of standing" to challenge Monsanto's patents. The closest you can come to that is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser in Canada of course; in this case he selected for Roundup Ready plants, like we discussed in the recent antibiotic resistance discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487) which is not an innocent accident. The end of the Wikipedia Monsanto article notes: "The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘...none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" – in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Let's for the moment assume that Monsanto sticks to its promise and will not sue farmers that have 'slight' (however that is defined) presence of the GMO within their otherwise normal crop. If they use roundup (which farmers tend to do, roundup use preceded roundup ready crops by decades) and the GMO is more resistant to roundup than the regular crop it stands to reason that if the farmer simply saves seed from each crop and replants the next year that after a few cycles the percentage of GMO within that population will no longer be slight. Seems like a long term problem to me.
      - skosuri 12y ago
        What? Why would a farmer spray roundup on their crop that's mostly not Roundup resistant? That makes no sense; it makes even less sense to do this season after season.
        hga 12y ago
        It would, in fact, result in so few survivors, unless of course started out in low concentrations, that it would be evidence of mens rea. As long as Monsanto is restricting their legal actions to those with "the intending mind", I'm not worried.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        Roundup resistant crops are much more recent than widespread use of roundup.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        Farmers have been using roundup long before roundup resistant crops came along. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
        skosuri 12y ago
        Yes I know, but not to do what you are implying. Specifically, why would farmers spray their non-GMO corn, soybean, canola, etc with Roundup? It would kill most of their crop/harvest.
  - BillinghamJ 12y ago
    And from what I hear, this happens a LOT.
    - hga 12y ago
      If you hear such, you should be able to provide more than one case like Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser (see my other comment in this subthread), which is the closest I've ever heard. Monsanto is not stupid.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        The answer to that question is here: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/why-does-monsanto-sue-farmers-who-save-seeds.aspx http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/why-does-monsanto-su... In a nutshell, most farmers settle rather than that they go to court. Either because they know they're in the wrong or because they can't afford to take on a corporation the size of Monsanto.
        hga 12y ago
        Indeed. The relevant language: When farmers purchase a patented seed variety, they sign an agreement that they will not save and replant seeds produced from the seed they buy from us.... A very small percentage of farmers do not honor this agreement. Monsanto does become aware, through our own actions or through third-parties, of individuals who are suspected of violating our patents and agreements. Where we do find violations, we are able to settle most of these cases without ever going to trial. That's because a lawsuit will be a slam dunk loss for the farmer. As every lawsuit actually filed has turned out to be. When you sign the contract, you are bound by its terms, you won't be able to get away with claiming ignorance afterwords. I'm curious, you feel very strongly about this. Do you have any farming background? Parents raised on farms? Grew up in a farming region?
        jacquesm 12y ago
        > I'm curious, you feel very strongly about this. Do you have any farming background? Parents raised on farms? Grew up in a farming region? I live in a farming region right now. But that has very little bearing on this, I simply think that there is something inherently wrong about copyright and/or patents on genetic sequences and/or organisms. Several of my close relationships are hip-deep in this subject both on the 'pro' and the 'con' side and my viewpoint is the result of lots of conversations and reading. I feel strongly about it because GMO could be (and possibly will be, see the C4 rice project) a huge benefit but we're actually using them on the international stage as a way to keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us in a way that they can't really refuse and we'll bribe our way there if we have to. See Shell in Africa, Bechtel in Latin America (and Monsanto too for that matter) and so on. It's the new colonialism, now 'roundup ready'.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Please read the article. It's about laws specifically created to stop farmers from saving seeds so they'll have to buy them from 'approved' sources.
  - dionidium 12y ago
    I read the article. I think it's being deliberately obfuscatory. It did not make clear whether the restrictions would apply to all seeds, to a particular group of banked sends, or specifically to GMOs purchased with this provision already in the contract. I suspect the reason they're waxing ambiguous is that it's the latter of that list and they want to make it sound more nefarious than it is.
  - shoyer 12y ago
    Really? The article talks about what external parties think about why these laws are being written, but doesn't any provide any direct evidence. And none of those even talk about "approved" sources.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- venomsnake 12y ago
  Yeah ... I love having the food security of my nation depending on a lawsuit and binding arbitrage against a corporation that has bigger GDP than that of my country. And lets not get into first sale doctrine, resale and seeds bought in good faith. Well ... do viruses have copyright? Because they are the only self replicating software I can think of. Can you link to some legal cases?
jjoonathan 12y ago
I had the chance to dive into this issue a few years ago for a school project, and I was shocked by two things: one, the restraint that Monsanto showed when seeking and litigating protections for their products, and two, the aggressive exaggerations and deceptive wording that environmental groups employed to attack Monsanto. Case #1: "Monsanto seeds/pollen from the neighboring farm blew into my farm and Monsanto sued me!" is the line that gets brandied about with regularity by environmental groups. Percy Schmeiser, the farmer in question, used it to launch a political career. It's also a highly selective retelling of the story that completely omits the __only__ part of the story that the courts objected to: upon learning that certain plants on his property contained the Monsanto roundup resistance gene, Schmeiser purposefully cultivated large quantities of these plants and deliberately took advantage of Monsanto's specific addition for commercial gain. The courts were very clear: cultivating the Monsanto Canola without a license was OK, but deliberately taking advantage of roundup resistance without a license was not. How do we know it was deliberate? Because non-Monsanto canola dies when you spray roundup on it. If Percy Schmeiser wasn't aware that he was "pirating" Monsanto crops, spraying his field with roundup would have killed his crop. Analogy: My neighbor downloaded Adobe Illustrator over unsecured wifi and I captured their serial number with a sniffer. Now Adobe is suing me because I used that serial number to register 100 new copies of Illustrator at the graphic design business I own. I claim (and the media reports) that I'm being sued because a serial-number laden wifi signal intruded on my property. After all, it could happen to you too! Case #2: Terminator genes. The way the media / environmental groups reported it: "Monsanto has patented genes which will prevent farmers from re-planting seeds if they can't pay Monsanto's fees! Monsanto's greed will cause poor people to starve!" The way Monsanto reported it: "Monsanto commits to never using terminator genes; we patented them so that we are never forced to use them in order to compete against someone who does." Monsanto has kept to their word. Come on, guys -- it seems a bit thankless to reward Monsanto for good behavior by lying and making it look like bad behavior. Case #3: Seralini's "GMOs cause cancer in rats" study. When we discussed it (the school project was a team project), we agreed that it had some seriously shoddy methodology (if you're teaching about PCA abuse, this paper is a good example). It was retracted shortly thereafter, naturally to cries of "conspiracy!" from environmental groups (and sighs of relief from us). Incidentally, a study reaching the opposite conclusion was recently released using a somewhat larger sample size (N=90,000,000,000 vs N=20). EDIT: clarified the Percy Schmeiser narrative to make it clearer that he knew exactly what he was doing (as was established in court).

shawndrost 12y ago

I'm an environmentalist and a humanitarian, and I want both of these things: 1. Freedom for Ghanaian farmers to plant their traditional crops. 2. Access for Ghanaian farmers to high-yield varietals developed by companies like Monsanto. This article implies that the law makes goal #1 illegal, but if you read closely, it is just an implication, and not an outright statement. My current understanding is that goal #1 is not made illegal by this bill. Does anyone have any contradictory evidence? My understanding of this law is that it adopts US-style IP laws for agriculture, which is a controversial idea. Supporters would say it creates incentives towards goal #2, because it's hard for Monsanto to sell self-reproducing technology at a profit without IP support. Detractors would say that it has other downsides. I don't think the detractors are wrong, but I have a question for anyone that's open to exchange views: If you oppose this law, but support goal #2, what do you think will bring Monsanto into Ghana? I only see three options: a) this law, b) Monsanto writes Ghana off as a loss and sells their unprotectable technology, c) we legally compel Monsanto to write Ghana off as a loss.

tartuffe78 12y ago
The issue in the U.S. is that flowering plants seeds travel by wind. So farmer A who bought Monsanto seeds infects farmer Bs field, who then can no longer legally harvest the seeds from field B because they contain Monsanto IP. Not sure if this applies to crops in Ghana, but its true in the US.
- hga 12y ago
  No, it is not true in the US, which you will learn if you read the rest of this discussion.
csekwalor 12y ago
Shawndrost - Id love to run an article related to this on Movemeback.com to engage the action and thoughts of African Diapora in the West. Really didn't expect to come across such content on HN - fantastic.C

bovermyer 12y ago

Could someone please tell me why intellectual property protection should even be a thing?

hga 12y ago
So people can make money with their minds, instead of just their hands? Patents, in fields where they make sense (not software, at least not without 1000x better patent offices) are also useful because they require disclosure up front, allowing immediate cross-fertilization, so to speak ^_^ (very important in Silicon Valley's meteoric development of ICs), and a limited life time. Without them, entities resort to trade secrets, which makes everyone indefinitely impoverished, ADDED: including the trade secret holder, because of that lack of cross-fertilization. Note the people once asked this question about land. For farms, in fact....
skosuri 12y ago
Why would any commercial entity invest in things like drug development, crop development, etc; if the moment they actually bring something to market it's trivially copied and sold at cost?
- bovermyer 12y ago
  I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted; it's an honest quesiton. Why does a business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a thing?
  - dionidium 12y ago
    > Why does a business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a thing? That has nothing to do with it. It's a question of incentives. Patent supporters believe that a limited monopoly encourages innovation. That's it.
  - hga 12y ago
    Errr, "a particular implementation of a thing" cannot be patented. It might be copyrightable (in the US, things with no creative content like a telephone book cannot be protected by copyright). GMOs are much more like inventions protectable by patents than creative works, like, say, an artificial form of life based on silicon. Not entirely different in principle than building a machine out of different mostly pre-fab parts, the combination of which is an invention.

paulvs 12y ago

Technically all things have APIs, but some need API keys. http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg