You can't patent curly leaves, only the specific variety that has them. The problem in the article is how one might tell the patented variety from the free one, without expensive DNA testing. This scared a person away from working with it.
escape into the wild: You'd be up for a decade or more of litigation against one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. There was a Canadian farmer who went exactly that route against (iirc) Monsanto, saying that their GMO Rapeseed (again, from memory) had contaminated his crop, but Monsanto sued him anyway for "illegally" growing their GMO stuff. I believe he "won" in the end. But at what cost to him?
and, "dominant species in the wild": Domestic crops are so pampered, so dependent on our adding nutrients, keeping predators and competitors at bay, that they stand very little chance of surviving long enough in the wild to be able to propagate. Dominant species? Not a chance.
There was a Canadian farmer who went exactly that route against (iirc) Monsanto, saying that their GMO Rapeseed (again, from memory) had contaminated his crop, but Monsanto sued him anyway for "illegally" growing their GMO stuff. I believe he "won" in the end. But at what cost to him?
In that case the farmer was also specifically selecting for the contaminated seeds. That makes the "his crops got accidentally contaminated and monsanto sued him for it" narrative very misleading.
As established in the original Federal Court trial decision, Percy Schmeiser, a canola breeder and grower in Bruno, Saskatchewan, first discovered Roundup-resistant canola in his crops in 1997.[5] He had used Roundup herbicide to clear weeds around power poles and in ditches adjacent to a public road running beside one of his fields, and noticed that some of the canola which had been sprayed had survived. Schmeiser then performed a test by applying Roundup to an additional 3 acres (12,000 m2) to 4 acres (16,000 m2) of the same field. He found that 60% of the canola plants survived. At harvest time, Schmeiser instructed a farmhand to harvest the test field. That seed was stored separately from the rest of the harvest, and used the next year to seed approximately 1,000 acres (4 km²) of canola.
Sounds like a smart farmer. Let’s pretend that the original resistant crop was natural, his actions are normal. Selecting good crops is basic farming. He was a victim here.
Monsanto used to sue anyone whose crops had been cross-pollinated with their own registered varieties, and it was the responsibility of the farmer to demostrate it was not intentional.
Source? Of the cases I've seen, it was pretty clear that the farmer was doing it intentionally, or at the very least was letting it happen "accidentally" but trying to speed it along.
That’s basic farming. You choose your best crops for the next season. If Monsanto can’t keep from seeding into non-customers crops, they aren’t allowed to demand the farmer cripple his ability to farm.
Comments
You can't patent curly leaves, only the specific variety that has them. The problem in the article is how one might tell the patented variety from the free one, without expensive DNA testing. This scared a person away from working with it.
The article claims that "utility patents" can be used to patent traits, such as colour - not just genetic strains. Is the article incorrect?
Nope. Here’s the actual guidelines for Europe and the USA:
https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/plant-patent#head...
https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/formats/plant-patents/patents
Europe:
https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/press-centre/fact-sheet/4....)
Isn't it possible to claim that the other party let the seeds escape into the wild?
And what would the legal status be if the new crop becomes the dominant species in the wild?
escape into the wild: You'd be up for a decade or more of litigation against one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth. There was a Canadian farmer who went exactly that route against (iirc) Monsanto, saying that their GMO Rapeseed (again, from memory) had contaminated his crop, but Monsanto sued him anyway for "illegally" growing their GMO stuff. I believe he "won" in the end. But at what cost to him?
and, "dominant species in the wild": Domestic crops are so pampered, so dependent on our adding nutrients, keeping predators and competitors at bay, that they stand very little chance of surviving long enough in the wild to be able to propagate. Dominant species? Not a chance.
Are you talking about this case? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...
In that case the farmer was also specifically selecting for the contaminated seeds. That makes the "his crops got accidentally contaminated and monsanto sued him for it" narrative very misleading.
Sounds like a smart farmer. Let’s pretend that the original resistant crop was natural, his actions are normal. Selecting good crops is basic farming. He was a victim here.
Monsanto used to sue anyone whose crops had been cross-pollinated with their own registered varieties, and it was the responsibility of the farmer to demostrate it was not intentional.
Absolutely sick. That's like copyrighting a computer virus and prosecuting everyone who has been infected.
Source? Of the cases I've seen, it was pretty clear that the farmer was doing it intentionally, or at the very least was letting it happen "accidentally" but trying to speed it along.
That’s basic farming. You choose your best crops for the next season. If Monsanto can’t keep from seeding into non-customers crops, they aren’t allowed to demand the farmer cripple his ability to farm.
A domesticated crop cannot generally survive without human help. It’s really unusual to find an exception.
Sounds like cheaper DNA testing would be stopgap. But even so, this seems like an unreasonable legal burden.