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.
