View Single Post
Old 02-16-2013, 07:40 AM   #345
Lamplighter
Person who doesn't update the user title
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Bottom lands of the Missoula floods
Posts: 6,402
The litigious behavior of Monsanto is well publicized,
including a TV documentary about them suing farmers for plants growing
in their fields from seeds that blew in from neighboring farm(s).

NY Times
ANDREW POLLACK
Published: February 15, 2013

Farmer’s Supreme Court Challenge Puts Monsanto Patents at Risk

Quote:
<snip>At stake in Mr. Bowman’s case is whether patents on seeds
— or other things that can self-replicate —
extend beyond the first generation of the products.<snip>
The decision might also apply to live vaccines, cell lines and DNA used
for research or medical treatment, and some types of nanotechnology.

Mr. Bowman’s main defense is patent exhaustion
— the concept that once a patented object is sold,
the patent holder loses control over how it is used.
<snip>

The Supreme Court affirmed this principle most recently in a 2008 case
involving Intel computer chips containing patented technology licensed from LG Electronics.
The court ruled that once Intel sold the chips to computer manufacturers,
LG’s rights were exhausted and LG could not control how the manufacturers used the chips in their machines.

Mr. Bowman said that for his main soybean crop, he honored Monsanto’s agreement,
buying new seeds each year containing the Roundup Ready gene,
which makes the plants immune to the herbicide Roundup.

That technology is hugely popular, used in more than 90 percent of the nation’s soybeans,
because it allows farmers to spray fields to kill weeds without hurting the crop.<snip>
So starting in 1999, he bought commodity soybeans from a grain elevator.
These beans were a mixture of varieties from different farmers, but, not surprisingly,
most of them were Roundup Ready. So Mr. Bowman sprayed Roundup on his late-season crop.


“All through history we have always been allowed to go to an elevator
and buy commodity grain and plant it,” he said in an interview.

The courts, however, have not agreed. After Monsanto sued Mr. Bowman in 2007,
a district court in Indiana awarded the company more than $84,000.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent cases,
upheld that decision, saying that by planting the seeds Mr. Bowman had created newly infringing articles.

“I was prepared to let them run over me,” Mr. Bowman said, “but I wasn’t getting out of the road.”
Mr Bowman admits to spraying Round Up on his second crop.
But if he had not used it (to his advantage), would he be in a better legal position ?
Lamplighter is offline   Reply With Quote