Posted on 02/11/2013 9:16:12 AM PST by Theoria
Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s pursuit of new products it says will “feed the world.”
“Hell’s fire,” said the 75-year-old self-described “eccentric old bachelor,” who farms 300 acres of land passed down from his father. Bowman rested in a recliner, boots off, the tag that once held his Foster Grant reading glasses to a drugstore rack still attached, a Monsanto gimme cap perched ironically on his balding head.
“I am less than a drop in the bucket.”
Yet Bowman’s unorthodox soybean farming techniques have landed him at the center of a national battle over genetically modified crops. His legal battle, now at the Supreme Court, raises questions about whether the right to patent living things extends to their progeny, and how companies that engage in cutting-edge research can recoup their investments.
What Bowman did was to take commodity grain from the local elevator, which is usually used for feed, and plant it. But that grain was mostly progeny of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready beans because that’s what most Indiana soybean farmers grow. Those soybeans are genetically modified to survive the weedkiller Roundup, and Monsanto claims that Bowman’s planting violated the company’s restrictions.
Those supporting Bowman hope the court uses the case, which is scheduled for oral arguments later this month, to hit the reset button on corporate domination of agribusiness and what they call Monsanto’s “legal assault” on farmers who don’t toe the line. Monsanto’s supporters say advances in health and environmental research are endangered.
And the case raises questions about the traditional role of farmers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
>> “How is this different?” <<
Did the seed have “Thou shalt not plant” stenciled on it?
If they sold it without binders and disclaimers, it would be the merchant, not the grower that erred.
>> “But cross polinated beans, if such things occur, would contain DNA unique from the patented Monsanto product.” <<
If they were grown in open fields near other varieties, that would most likely be so.
the courts have ALREADY ruled that we do not own our own DNA. A researcher can TAKE your dna and develope a multimillion dollar treatment and give you no compensation.
One need not test for any gene. The most accurate and sensitive test for cancer is the “H.C.G.” test, that relies solely on the presence of HCG to discern if cancer is present in the body, and it is really cheap: $75 plus postage.
Had he purchased a book, photocopied it and sold off the copies, wouldn’t he have violated the copyright?
For example a farmer can’t be allowed to sell the Monsanto QWERTY 8765 soybean variety from his bin that he grew; that is a Monsanto variety.
But they also are not allowed to intimidate someone who does what this old guy is doing.
? HCG detects pregnancy.
You may not own yours but monsanto doesn’t automatically own a hybrid they never patented. To my knowledge that issue has not been adjudicated by any court of competent jurisdiction.
Don’t you think having large corporations corner the seed market and engineer non-viable seeds might be a little on the stupid side?
Our food supply chain is already so fragile, if we had some major anything happen, this type of thinking would seem to compound the issue.
True—and agreed!
But cross polinated beans, if such things occur, would contain DNA unique from the patented Monsanto product.
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. The patent is on the gene, not be bean. If the gene is present in your bean, then you violate the patent -- at least that's Monsanto's position. The counter position is that the patent applies to the beans you buy from Monsanto, but not the beans you buy from someone who grew more beans from the original. The problem with that is that makes Monsanto's IP worthless. If any GMO product is only one generation from becoming "not IP" then you can't recover your research outlay.
So, think about this: let's say you like the iPhone and you make an exact copy. Did you violate Apple's IP? Yes. But what if the iPhone had a mode that allowed you to make another iPhone? We'll call the original the parent and the new one the child. Obviously, Apple's patents and so forth apply to the parent iPhone. Do they apply to the child? What if Apple placed restrictions on what you could do with the child? Like, you could use the child iPhone only as a backup if you broke the parent, and you were forbidden to create a "grandchild" iPhone. Do they have the authority to do that?
There are lots of things you can buy that make things. For example, you can make bread with a breadmaker, and the company that made the breadmaker has no say over what kind of bread you can make or what you can do with it. The tricky questions arise with products that replicate copies of themselves.
“Otherwise, buying feed beans at feed prices implies a limitation on their use.”
If there was an agreement made at the time of sale, then it would, but otherwise, nothing is implied. If you sell me a product with no strings attached, then I am free to do as I please with it.
“If they self-fertilize then this guy is copying monsanto’s product.”
Hmm, if they self-fertilize, then isn’t Monsanto’s product copying itself?
Here is a stickier issue. If I plant my unpatented soybeans and they are pollenated primarily by my neighbor’s patented soybeans (due to wind), am I breaking the protection on the patent?
This guy fought monsanto all the way to Canadian supreme court - and lost
That would be because we have copyright laws.
We don’t have laws that say you can’t plant seeds as seeds.
Monsanto has contracts that specifically say that, but as I understand it there were no such contracts signed for the purchase of the feed.
So, a farmer could purchase from a local elevator and replant replant corn (almost all corn is hybrid) without violating any patent because the characterististics of the next generation differ substantially from those of the plant which produced the seed. This soybean seed was not hybrid and the farmer purchased it knowing what the traits of the plants would be.
Soybeans are almost entirely self pollinating; that is: by the time the bean flower blossoms and theoretically could be pollinated by a neighbor’s plant, it has already been pollinated by itself (the bean blossom contains both the stamen and the pistil). If a farmer’s bean crop bears any significant genetic similarity to a patented seed, it was grown from that seed and wasn’t the accidental result of cross pollination.
Then substitute corn, apples, watermelons or whatever you like into the comment.
Nobody would ever buy bin run corn as seed corn, the crop would be a failure regardless of how it is pollinated. The farmer in this article bought the beans because he knew that soybeans are not hybridized (because they are self pollinating) and that they would reproduce the patented traits.
HCG is produced when cells are rapidly dividing, which can be pregnancy if the patient is a young woman, but for all others it signals cancer.
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