Read the case. He knowingly planted Roundup Ready plants across his whole field. Alternatively, find a case for what you say happened happening before you assume it to be true.
The Runyons say they signed no agreements, and if they were contaminated with the genetically modified seed, it blew over from a neighboring farm.
"Pollination occurs, wind drift occurs. There's just no way to keep their products from landing in our fields," David said.
"What Monsanto is doing across the country is often, and according to farmers, trespassing even, on their land, examining their crops and trying to find some of their patented crops," said Andrew Kimbrell, with the Center For Food Safety. "And if they do, they sue those farmers for their entire crop."
In fact, in Feb. 2005 the Runyons received a letter from Monsanto, citing "an agreement" with the Indiana Department of Agriculture giving it the right to come on their land and test for seed contamination.
Only one problem: The Indiana Department of Agriculture didn't exist until two months after that letter was sent. What does that say to you?
He didn't just plant Roundup-ready seeds. He took advantage of the fact that they were Roundup-ready.
The way Roundup works is, the seeds confer resistance in crops to an herbicide. The herbicide is easily obtainable and cheap; the only thing interesting about it is that if you plant special Roundup-ready seeds, you can easily use it to kill weeds without killing crops.
for those that don't understand the implications of this:
the runyons claim that the seeds got there accidentally, and imply that they had no knowledge of the seeds' origins. given that they also sprayed Roundup on their crops, the claim just makes no sense. if your crops are not "Roundup-ready", Roundup will kill your crops along with the weeds.
if it was really the wind that blew in some seeds, then they never would have sprayed Roundup on their crop.
I can think of an extremely simple experiment that can be run on a field of unknown corn to determine if it is Roundup ready, in a few hours, with only the loss of a couple of corn plants and less than a teaspoon of Roundup.
I think it's pretty well stipulated in this case that the farmer knew the field was sown with Roundup-ready crops, and that the farmer deliberately employed Roundup to exploit that.
The farmer's argument was that they didn't sow those seeds deliberately, and that they should therefore be allowed to take advantage of the Roundup-ready properties of the field without paying licensing fees.
I don't have a strong opinion about the validity of that argument, except to note that Monsanto is in this case in a bind very similar to that of IP rightsholders. Seeds can be propagated like bits; in theory, that propagation occurs without any cost to Monsanto. But in practice, widespread unauthorized copying destroys the Monsanto business model.
The possibility of unintended propagation of Monsanto seeds probably makes them less sympathetic than IP rightsholders; nobody accidentally pirates a full-length movie.
how does this experiment have any relation to reality?
i think you're implying that this farmer happened upon an entire field of crops that he did not plant, then determined that this field was seeded using roundup-ready seeds, and then sprayed roundup on that field.
do you really think that the entire field was planted by the wind? do you think that this guy left his fields fallow and then the wind just seeded the entire thing? or that he planted his own seeds, but then the wind blew in enough seeds to displace enough of his crop that he could spray it with roundup and still have enough crop left for a good yield?
My observation is simply that the claim that it doesn't make sense for someone to serendipitously discover that their crops are Roundup-ready isn't really true. Is it the dominant-probability hypothesis? Heck no. It is, however, sufficiently likely that sooner or later it will happen.
In fact, if the genes get out there in the wild, and Monsanto de facto forbids people from discovering this fact, it isn't inconceivable that the genes could spread far and wide without anyone actually noticing until much later.
That's not a lawsuit, I can't find a suit filed anywhere by Monsanto against the Runyons.
Also if theses seeds blow all over the place contaminating everything then all monsanto would have to do is stand on the side of the road and wait for a seed to blow over. No need to trespass.
Link to court documents not Monsanto PR or GMO protestor PR. What you find in court is a lot different than what GMO protestors say and is actually a lot closer to what Monsanto says IMHO. But again, ignore the Monsanto PR and just look to the court docs which contain facts as determined by a judge and not hearsay.
I used that case because it's the most famous one people refer too. Runyon is another famous person. Look, I've watched Food Inc too. Again, show me the case (which I believe does not exist). You showed me a news article. Otherwise this is just someone who has been in a bunch of movies and is suing Monsanto, and is not really an unbiased source (just like I don't link directly to Monsanto's website on the Runyons.)
I don't know what level of evidence would satisfy you, as you seem to have a pre-existing bias against the farmers' claims.
Monsanto attempted to sue, then dropped its case against the Runyons. Given Monsanto's otherwise litigious history, and the damage that would be done to the company if they were to lose a case like this in court, the evidence points in favor of the farmer.
Statements like "I believe (any case) does not exist" and "this is just someone who has been in a bunch of movies" show bias, and tell me that you're unlikely to accept anything short of a full and frank confession from Monsanto that they have aggressively sued innocent farmers.
What do you call a company that pursues cases like the one cited in the CBS News article about Mo Parr?
74-year-old Mo Parr is a seed cleaner; he is hired by farmers to separate debris from the seed to be replanted. Monsanto sued him claiming he was "aiding and abetting" farmers, helping them to violate the patent.
"There's no way that I could be held responsible," Parr said. "There's no way that I could look at a soy bean and tell you if it's Round-up Ready."
The company subpoenaed Parr's bank records, without his knowledge, and found his customers. After receiving calls from Monsanto, some of them stopped talking to him.
"It really broke my heart," Parr said. "You know, I could hardly hold a cup of coffee that morning,"
I won't make any further arguments about this, because I'm not trying to change your mind if its already made up.
It blows my mind that there are people on HN confusing opposition to the horrific practices that Monsanto uses with opposition to GM crops in general. I am a supporter of GM strains of crops, because I think they have proven environmental benefits. However, what Monsanto did to the seed cleaner is no different than blaming BitTorrent for piracy. The only difference is that BitTorrent sites actually have a somewhat possible way to determine copyrighted works from open works.
The seed cleaner is being sued simply because his services are utilized by people trying to cheat Monsanto as well as those who are simply seeking to continue growing their heirloom strains. This isn't justice. This is simply a huge corporation with vast legal resources doing whatever is necessary to prevent theft of their IP rights, even if that involves trampling people that committed no crimes. It is cheaper for Monsanto to put every seed cleaner out of business than to go after the actual IP infringers. But it is not really legal, and only holds up in court because the seed cleaners can't afford to fight Monstanto's legal shield, and too few judges bother to inform themselves on the topic.
I am a supporter of GM strains of crops, because I think they have proven environmental benefits.
I'm not trying to argue over this and I certainly won't try to change your mind, but if you haven't already seen it, this 30 year long study[1] is an interesting read and suggests that organic farming has many benefits over conventional farming and GM crops. I totally understand that the Rodale Institute has an interest in proving this to be the case, but I'd argue that the pro-GM studies are also performed by groups and companies that have an interest in proving their results too. In any case, I'm only trying to offer information on a potential counter-view, not start an argument neither of us could win anyway. :)
I like your analogy of equating going after the seed cleaners with BitTorrent. I'd argue it's way worse than that also because, if my understanding is correct, the seed cleaning is an integral part of the process of reusing the seeds, which is an integral part of cheap(er), more traditional methods of farming. It seems to me like in addition to trying to conduct infringement reduction with a cricket bat instead of a scalpel, they're trying to eliminate the ability for farmers to farm in the way they had for generations and to force them to purchase the GMO seeds by making parts of the process-flow the smaller farmers use illegal. Not to be too gloom and doom but this is pretty gloom and doom. Do we really want these corporations (Monsanto, Dow and their ilk) who obviously do not have our best interest in mind to have almost complete control of the supply of our food staples? I sure don't.
this is not at all like blaming bittorrent sites for pirating
look, you don't understand what this seed cleaner was doing. monsanto does not go around suing every seed cleaner in the midwest just because they could be cleaning roundup ready seeds. they sued moe parr, and they did so because he told other farmers that it was legal for them to clean their roundup ready seeds (which it is not).
I'm curious why it would be illegal to remove debris from seeds (or does "clean" mean something else in this context?). What is Monsanto mixing with their Roundup-ready seeds that they so desperately want to get planted along with the crop?
cleaning is how you transform this years crops into next year's seeds. one of the agreements you sign when you buy roundup-ready seeds is that you don't clean seeds.
basically, by seed cleaning, you don't have to buy more roundup ready seeds.
look, if you think a news article quoting Moe Parr about someone suing him is convincing evidence, i'm not really sure if you'll believe this, but here's some evidence indicating that Moe Parr is in the wrong:
EDIT: Sorry, read that as "where Monsanto sued and won the case" I expect you won't find many cases where Monsanto was sued and lost, since they would be extremely inclined to settle and it would be hard for a farmer to turn down the sort of money that Monsanto has available to it.
I think winning is considered important because of the mistaken presumption that this has some bearing on how Monsanto is conducting itself or the guilt or innocence of the farmers involved. The unfortunate truth is that Monsanto will probably never lose such a case, they will settle or drop a case that they think they have any chance of losing. The legal system in most of the world is such that just threats and intimidation is enough to "win" because of the costs and damage just having a suit drag on will bring a favourable result for Monsanto.
These are not two equally equipped sides engaging in a fair judicial process to settle a contract dispute, pretending that it is such a circumstance is overwhelmingly unfair to the farmers involved.
Ok, then a good starting point would be citations of cases that Monsanto brought against farmers and then dropped. You'd think farmers would make a lot of noise about those, but either way, those cases should be discoverable.
Monstanto's own website says they have sued 145 times and only gone to trial 11 times. In the past I know they have indicated that they have settled more than 500 cases out of court but I can not find a good citation for that.
I personally believe that Monsanto is probably correct in most of their accusations against farmers but the imbalance of power that exists between the two parties means that Monsanto does have something of a free hand to do as it likes regardless of whether it is in the right or not. I am not from the United States but given what I know of the structure of the business down there if you can't use any of their products you will have a lot of difficulty continuing to earn a livelihood as a conventional farmer.
it sets a legal precedent. This is why companies love to settle out of court and to not admit any wrong doings. This is how finance companies are investigated by the SEC, pays a settlement, declares nothing wrong was done and continues on with the practice that got them investigated in the first place.
Because if Monsanto wins then the farmer is guilty, and I'm not interested in condemning Monsanto for suing in cases where they've actually been legally wronged.
(If you wanna debate whether the law should be different then that's another argument.)
Oh yes, obvious conflict and I should have disclosed this major point. I didn't even know it, but that does not excuse me. George Church was an LSRF fellow (independent non-profit fellowship), which are named after the donation company. Thus George was sponsored indirectly by Monsanto in 1984 for working as a post-doc in Gail Martin's lab working on embryogenesis and development.
http://www.lsrf.org/alumni/alumni84.htm
Thanks to the work of an anonymous user researching who you work for at Harvard, you have been revealed to work at a lab which receives funding from Monsanto. I'm not saying this discredits you, but you should state this up front.
I have sympathy for geneticists who have to deal with the anti-GM knee jerk reactionaries, but Monsanto tramples on constitutional rights of small farmers who don't have the legal resources to defend themselves. The fact that many of these farmers are guilty of stealing IP doesn't change this fact.
To be a bit more accurate, Schmeiser's Canola field was contaminated by his neighbour's plants. Schmeiser saved the seed and mixed it with his own hybrid, so his own plants inherited the Roundup Ready gene from the contaminated seed.
This is his claim. It doesn't make much sense. Why would he spray his entire crop with roundup? Even if it were true, he still knowingly was getting RoundUp Ready seeds to avoid paying Monsanto. That's somewhat like saying: "I found this copy of adobe photoshop on this used computer.. I copied it and sold it; since i didn't originally purchase it, I'm not responsible."
A quote from the Canadian Supreme Court:
"Mr. Schmeiser complained that the original plants came onto his land without his intervention. However, he did not at all explain why he sprayed Roundup to isolate the Roundup Ready plants he found on his land; why he then harvested the plants and segregated the seeds, saved them, and kept them for seed; why he planted them; and why, through his husbandry, he ended up with 1,030 acres of Roundup Ready canola which would have cost him $15,000."
If your bulls raid my pasture and attack and rape my cows, I might shoot them and even have a barbecue. There's no reason I can't raise the calves as my own.
Who cares what Schmeiser did to the plants GROWING ON HIS OWN LAND? Why must he explain his reasons to anyone for dealing with a predatory invader?
I think a better analogy might be a beneficial computer virus.
Let's say you write a virus that uses patented technology to remove malware, defragment the drives, reorganize the registry and whatever else a Windows machine needs to run well these days. It infects some of my company's computers, and I notice that they're running well. I direct the IT department to wipe all machines that aren't running well, and leave the ones that are alone.
What you should have invented is a anti virus whose distribution you can control. Not a virus that removes a malware. The point behind a virus is a technology difficult to control. Now you invent a beneficial technology extremely difficult to control and which spreads. And then you express surprise when it actually spread?
Honey bees or in general bees are used by nature for cross pollination. If bees are spreading your technology then really its not the farmer that you can blame here. Those bees can fly anywhere. This can spread to a jungle and suddenly you might be faced with a scenario of this thing having spread beyond uncontrollable means. Whom will you sue then?
That's a good argument against the patentability of genetically modified plants, but not against the validity of the case given that GM plants currently ARE patentable.
Their argument seems to be that I have to make an effort to isolate the descendants of your strain to be in violation of your IP rights. They're not talking about the situation where I let your strain mingle with mine and take no other action.
Define "make an effort." This gray area is an automatic settle out of court auto-win button.
If i'm a good farmer, wouldn't i be trying to isolate the best crops from my fields? And isn't there a high chance that the best ones were the genetically modified ones?
I think if they are going to claim IP rights over the natural reproductive system of these plants, that they should be able to be sued for massive damages when they knowingly "pollute" other people's crops with their genes. Property rights goes in both directions. Fine, it's your property -- why are you polluting all of my crops?
Who cares what Schmeiser did to the plants GROWING ON HIS OWN LAND? Why must he explain his reasons to anyone for dealing with a predatory invader?
Analogy: someone accidentally drops a backpack containing DVDs in my front yard. Am I now licensed to make and sell copies of the content on those DVDs?
Anyway, your argument is with the Canadian Supreme Court, not with Monsanto.
That's a deliberately flawed analogy. You don't copy the DVDs. The DVDs copy themselves, using your land and resources to do so.
This is more like somebody "accidentally" setting up a DVD pressing factory on your property. You quietly let the factory owner continue pressing DVDs (using your electricity no less) and sell the DVDs yourself when they're ready. It's all on your property, the factory owner is trespassing and I don't see how the factory owner can claim a right to the pressed DVDs. (Don't build automated self-reproducing things that you want to claim patents on, even when they're stealing other people's resources.)
I'm not so sure why people are trying to make analogies between copyright law pertaining to software and patent law pertaining to genetic material. All of these analogies seem so strained that they lose all their power.
You patent a specially engineered cow to taste good with your specially engineered steak sauce. One day your specially engineered steers jump my fence and rape my cows. Upon realizing this, I begin buying your special steak sauce from you and eating my new cows with it.
When your analogy is not about "patent law pertaining to genetic material", you wash out the absurdity.
Steers, per se, lack the (ahem, equipment) capacity to impregnate cows. I think you mean your bull jumps my fence.
Also I believe it could be argued that a specially engineered bull would rise to the level of a "dangerous animal" (such as keeping an elephant or a lion) for purposes of trespass and liability. The owner of a genetically engineered, patent-encumbered, bull would know and have prior knowledge about the unique danger involved in having such an animal escape and be held especially liable.
The difference is that DVDs do not make copies of themselves. Schmeiser simply used the seeds that ended up on his land (as far as I know, I don't know all the details of the case). Wouldn't the analogy then be, should you be able to watch the DVDs that ended up in your front yard?
>Schmeiser simply used the seeds that ended up on his land (as far as I know, I don't know all the details of the case).
It only takes a few minutes to find out the details of the case. He didn't just accidentally get some Monsanto seeds mixed in with his own -- instead, he noticed some Roundup-resistant plants growing on his land, collected seeds from them, planted them in a test field, and then separated the Roundup-resistant from the non-Roundup-resistant strains by... well, spraying 'em with Roundup. In other words, he went to some effort to deliberately separate and reproduce the specific Roundup-resistant strain which happened to wind up on his land.
I don't see how that's different from what I'm saying. The seeds did accidentally get mixed into his own. Whatever steps he took afterwards to isolate them, plant them, etc. is just using the seeds.
You might want to read the actual findings, they put patent law above rights of property holder. Not knowing might have mitigated the damages, but it would have not stopped the lawsuit.
Of course they did, the whole point of patent law is that it restricts what you can do with your own property. I think it would be nice if ignorance was an excuse in patent cases, but the fact that it isn't is a big part of why our current patent system is so toxic in general, especially in software.
I think the idea that someone can pollute your property and then charge you for it is a grievous violation of property rights. It is not the patent I object to, it is the idea that a polluter can "corrupt" my crop and then charge me for it.
I also think the idea that you can sue someone just for seeds that blew in is absurd. But as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened. In each case where someone was sued by Monsanto they were alleged to have deliberately tried to save only the GM seeds. And of course they denied it and said that it wasn't deliberate, but what they were charged with was deliberate patent violation.
Yes, they're bad guys. But reading it quickly I didn't see any cases of them suing people for having had their fields accidentally contaminated. Its possible for a person or company to be bad without being guilty of every bad thing anyone says about them.
The original case you dismiss (Schmeiser) is acknowledged by both sides that the field was contaminated by passing trucks. Both he and the company have said he bought no seed from Monsanto. The court ruling said it didn't matter what he did after that (knowingly or unknowingly) since he was a person who reused seed which is how it has been done forever until Monsanto.
The reason they are after all the record on page 2 of the article is they are taking anyone who had seed cleaning done - even if they are not their customers. Its real easy to prove their seed mixed since even Monsanto admits that pollen-flow is inevitable (Monsanto's 2005 Technology Agreement).
Google Tom Wiley who is a ND farmer. He has some interesting experiences in the contamination area.
Read the case. He knowingly planted Roundup Ready plants across his whole field. Alternatively, find a case for what you say happened happening before you assume it to be true.