I don’t think you’ve read the Order.
Have you?
I don’t think you’ve read the Order.
Have you?
Well, I actually read it. And it SAYS it’s an addendum.
Section 1: it’s called “AMENDMENTS TO the (name of law.)” There’s no text of the full law, because the full law is not Order 81. It’s the original Iraqi Patent and Industrial Designs Law of 1970, which Order 81 renames and amends. The preamble of Order 81 rather clearly states this. The purpose of Order 81 is not to state the entire law, it is to amend the law o bring it in line with international norms.
So unless you guys have a copy of Iraq’s Patent and Industrial Designs Law, you do not have at your disposal the full text of the law. Or even most of it. And neither does Ionizer, who is literally railing against the unfairness of a law he’s never read, containing provisions he cannot demonstrate to exist.
Where is it?
Not yet…and apparently, neither have you.
Not really. It’s really rather difficult to get a specific gene fixed in a population by random processes unless it has a strong selection advantage. Cite.
Our buddy Percy was knowingly supplying that strong selection advantage. That’s why he was dinged. Deservedly.
True, that…but did you read the link to the other court case? Also, there is still the problem of farmers trying to deliberately improve their seed stock without running afoul of Monsanto’s still-unknown “characteristics”.
Too late to edit, so a second post:
It always amazes me how many people are [del]willing[/del] eager to pontificate on this subject, at length, despite a(n obvious) lack of knowledge of population dynamics, genetics, plant propagation, selective breeding, etc. “Pollination spreads the patented gene to the wind! How can you keep that!!!” Ummm… maybe because the patented gene pretty much cannot become fixed in the population without a lot of selective breeding help? Wouldn’t that help count as ‘patent infringement’? That’s what the court in question found. He even admitted doing just that. The court rejected the ‘pollen blows’ defense, in light of his actual efforts to intentionally select for the patented gene in his personal seed stock. Said efforts being vitally necessary for him to wind up with the infringing crop he got dinged for.
Idiot was guilty.
Sorry, they can’t patent “characteristics”. They have to patent an actual gene they developed.
Your Socratic JAQing off does not impress me.
You seem determined to cling to ideas which don’t really exist in the actual world.
"Characteristics " is not the key element in either US law or Iraqi Order 81.
Which you have, or have not, read yet?
Are you deliberately not reading it so you can continue to spout these sorts fo ideas and maintain the defense that you were just going off the third party analyses?
Link, please?
Ahh, I see the confusion. Correct – the full order 81 is not the same thing as the full law – that is, merely reading Order 81 does not tell you what the ultimate text of the law is.
But it does tell you what the ultimate text of Order 81 is. That’s not an addendum to Order 81 – it IS Order 81, which is itself an addendum to other law.
That’s correct, and my phrasing was poor.
The fact remains that no evidence has been presented that any Coalition order forbade Iraqis from saving their own seed, using traditional seed, or any similar thing. The “cites” presented by Ionizer are all (very obviously, to me, anyway) sensationalistic and ignorant.
Completely concur.
No doubt, Schmeisser’s deliberate actions are emphasized in the decision. Importantly, though, it was his use of the seed, not its collection, which was the infringement. See, e.g., Paragraph 30. Whether the same argument could be applied to an innocent farmer is left open. See Paragraph 57:
See also Paragraph 45 (acknowledging that broad construction of a patent can reach accidental infringement). But see Paragraph 76 (suggesting that saving seed not tested for Roundup resistance should be okay.) Bottom line, you may be right that’s how the next case will turn out. (Involving another patent, as this one has since expired.) But, if I were a farmer, or counsel advising a farmer, I’d be hesitant to take the chance. Merely defending the claim would be expensive. IMHO, the decision could and should have been more definitive.
I’ve been skimming through this thread, apologies if someone answered this already…
We looked at Monsanto v Schmeiser in 1L property, and we’re still tackling the Harvard mouse case in more than one of my upper year cases. The SCC decided that a higher lifeform could not be the subject of a patent. Just to be clear, Monsanto actually doesn’t have a patent in the plant per se, just in the particular roundup resistant gene strain, right? I think the post above me is implying that, but then I’m wondering how the court has resolved this with not allowing a patent in the cancer gene in Harvard’s oncomouse.
I don’t think GM technology, as with most technology, should be categorically labeled as bad. The problem seems to be that in so many cases this technology is used not to improve the human situation but instead solely to increase profits for companies like Monsanto at the expense of everyone else.
Safety and concern for human well-being has never been Monsanto’s strong suit:
- monsanto manufactured toxic PCBs (apparently quite sloppily!) contaminating water and people around their factories. Paid $600M to settle claims for victims in Anniston, Alabama alone.
www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/11/us-food-monsanto-idUSTRE5AA05Q20091111?irpc=932 - Monsanto is partially responsible for contamination in at least 21 superfund sites (EPA superfund database http://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/srchsites.cfm)
- Monsanto described its ubiquitous roundup weed killer in public advertisements as “safe as table salt” until it got sued by the NY attorney general. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in roundup is now implicated as a cause of birth defects on the basis of several studies: HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost
- bt toxin from GM foods (which was claimed to break down quickly upon ingestion) was found in the blood of at least 69% of women in this study as well as in agricultural runoff Archived Article Notice
Certainly doesn’t make me inclined to trust any of Monsanto’s claims especially when it comes to food. .
Why are we arguing about Order 81? The Provisional Authority has been dissolved, so unless the Iraqi government has adopted its directives wholesale (maybe I missed a post where someone points out that they did)…
Doing a little more reading on the Schmeiser case, I discover the cite above (which originally came from Bricker) goes to the Court of Appeals decision. For the Canadian Supreme Court decision, see here. For its discussion of how intention fits in, see starting at Paragraph 49 (“The general rule is that the defendant’s intention is irrelevant to a finding of infringement”). Basically, an innocent farmer has a defense of being able to rebut a presumption of use. See Paragraph 56; see also Paragraph 95. Burden of proof, though, presumably on innocent farmer.
I’m not sure how accurate your claims are, but I can say that at least one is misleading, at best. I’m not finding any evidence that the NY Attny General “sued” Monsanto for their ad spots. It looks like they voluntarily removed the spots after he complained, despite the fact that they complied with the EPA.
Another is misleading, or outright false.
Shocking, I know, that “Earth Open Source” would provide slanted reporting.
I have no idea what is going on in this thread but there is another thread where Bricker is complaining that liberals don’t do enough to combat the liberal’s war on science, so I thought I’d just drop by and say that people should stop attacking science (if that’s what they’re doing), science has enough problem without having liberals attack it as well.
There is NOTHING wrong with genetically modified foods NOTHING, there are risks associated with having only one strain of any crop out there, genetically modified or not.
Monsanto is evil but not because they sell genetically modified seeds but because they sell those seeds to subsistence level Indian farmers who would be better off with their highly durable current crop than with the monsanto disease resistant high yield seeds that require a lot more maintanance than the typical subsistnence farmer can provide. It reminds me of when infant formula makers convinced Subsaharan Africa that their baby formula was better for their children than breast milk (it may not be much worse but it certainly isn’t better) and it also happened to increase birth rates (lactation hinders ovulation), something these mothers didn’t really need.