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.
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?