I’m not positive if it specifically applies to Monsanto’s situation, as IANAL, but the US does have some “use it or lose it” patent laws that require companies to defend patented laws against all comers, or lose the rights to the patent. It comes up in trademark law too, and it’s the reason that McDonald’s sues anyone with a “Mc” in their name, even if it’s a family business and the family is really Mc-something. They once sent a “cease and desist” letter to a woman named McDougal, or something, for her handmade Teddy bears called McBears, even though her output was less than 20 a year. The reasoning goes that if they look the other way for Ms. McDougal, they give tacit approval for Burger King to bring out a product called a McKing.
So, it may actually be incumbent upon Monsanto to sue, or at least go on record as insisting that the farmer “cease and desist,” in order to keep their patent.
If there are any patent attorneys, they can correct me, because I’m sure I have details wrong.
Couldn’t they have granted her a time-limited, non-transferrable license to manufacture a maximum of, say, fifty products bearing a fanciful name beginning with “Mc”, for a token payment of one penny per item?
As discussed above, if you save seed you’re in violation of your contract, for which they get to sue you for (what I assume is) everything you’ve got, which will include anything you grow next year (which it will be by the time the case ends).
By “Monsanto-owns-royalty-rights-to-my-harvest-next-year-just-because-I-saved-some-seed-from-this-year” do you mean “I’m-on-the-hook-for-the-fee-specified-in-the-contract-I-signed-plus-damages-for-having-tried-to-dodge-payment”?
If Monsanto is using contract law to enforce this, then Privity of Contract would seem to apply. If you didn’t sign on the dotted line with Monsanto, then you have no specific obligations to Monsanto other than through general tort principles. Likewise, if you bought seeds from a farmer who did sign a contract with Monsanto, but you never did, but only acquired the seeds indirectly in that way, then Monsanto would have a better cause of action against them than against you.
If the corner Shop-O-Mart is selling U-Sav-Lots milk in violation of a contract that they signed with the dairy firm not to sell more than 5 gallons a week to smart-ass city slickers, that’s not my responsibility. First Sale doctrine and all that. The dairy can pound sand.
But what happens after Monsanto notifies you that the property was improperly transferred?
Is this a case of unknowingfully being in possession of stolen property? Maybe Monsanto can’t seize your entire crop this year…but if, now knowing the property was wrongfully transferred, you re-plant another year’s crop, shouldn’t they have some legal recourse?
Say my roommate makes me a tape of music, in violation of copyright laws. I don’t know that’s it’s stolen. I have no way to know. I just was given a tape. But when the copyright owners tell me the full situation, and if I then make another copy to give to a different friend, I am very much in the wrong.
I don’t know which (if any!) of these analogies is closest (or even close at all.) But it seems iffy to me for people to be able to continue to do wrong, just because they didn’t know at first that it was wrong.
But part of this is that it isn’t contract law. It’s intellectual property law. These seeds are monsanto’s IP, and they have a patent on them, which you can license, or not. You can’t use them without the license. Compare it to software licensing. Yeah, the guy who put CS5 up on Demonoid is probably more culpable than you, but just because you never signed a contract with Adobe doesn’t mean they can’t come after you for violating their IP. As for suing the other guy, well, in some cases it’s not really realistic. Case in point: the Percy Schmeisser case. You can’t sue someone for accidental transmission. Those seeds are tiny and there are a lot of them. But Monsanto doesn’t care about Schmeisser getting a handful of seeds. They care about him specifically selecting for them and replanting them.
Um… No. This is a common misconception. Terminator seeds never hit the market (although they would solve a lot of problems) due to public outcry. And either way, farmers saving their seeds is a rarity these days, because even non-GMO seeds are often hybridized, and they lose their positive characteristics (or at least many of them) in the second generation.
This is sort of like complaining about a software company charging you X amount per year to use their software. Don’t like it? It’s their IP. They have a patent on the technology. If you don’t want to license it, you don’t get to use it.
Maybe I get a letter from Monsanto alleging that I am in possession of stolen property. They provide little, if any, evidence that this is actually so. No serial numbers, no security camera footage… So I decide that Monsanto is a lying sack of crap and ignore their screed. Maybe I write back and tell them that every pen on every desk at Monsanto HQ was stolen from me and please return them immediately. What, they don’t believe me? Well, I don’t believe them either.
Ok, I write back and tell them that they have 60 days to come collect their property, paying careful attention not to take any of mine. People do this with cars parked on their lawn all the time - don’t pick it up in X months, it’s mine and you waive ownership. It’s considered acquiescence or estoppel.
robert_columbia: I suspect you’re not taking the issue particularly seriously.
“I just ignore them” is, perhaps, a working practical answer, but it isn’t a legal principle that anyone can reasonably put forward in a debate.
I might just as well answer, “They come after you with their million-dollar lawyers and seize your entire farm.” That might actually happen, but it isn’t a legal principle I want anything to do with.
Your idea certainly wouldn’t work in my example of making additional duplicates of an audio disk that I have been informed is in violation of musical copyright. Simply ignoring them, or daring them to “come and get it” (“You can seize the music if you want, but the disk is my private property!”) could lead to a really hefty fine. It is neither a valid approach in practical reality or in abstract legal dispute.
“Informed” in what way? Your hard disk has 100 megabytes of my intellectual property on it. I demand that you delete it immediately. This is your notification. Proof? This notification is enough proof! Delete it now! Now!
Apparently, the perfect IP business model is to patent a computer virus. Make sure to give it a phone home ability so that you know who to send cease and desist letters to.
I know this is what the leftist hippy agitators claim, but it seems more like scientific misunderstanding to me. There was ONE case where a Canadian farmer was prosecuted and Monsanto won based on genetic evidence, but such evidence was overwhelming. The Canadian farmer’s crops were like 90% containing the monsanto genes. The guy had obviously saved the seed and violated the contract and Intellectual Property laws.
GM crops grown here and there cannot overwhelm the genes of neighboring fields by passive intermingling. Not to mention most farmers buy their seed, and seed is specifically grown to be seed, so the seed-producers take stuff like their neighbors into account. Indeed it’s that aspect of growing seed that is the reason there’s even a split between the farmer and the seed-grower. Any gardener knows about this.
Yeah, I guess. I’m not a fan of the concept of selling-but-not-really-selling things.
Be that as it may, do Monsanto’s IP rights, as protected by patent law, give them the right to do this forever, or is there a time limit on how long they can restrict access to the seed under these terms?
But again, and again, and again, Monsanto doesn’t go after those with mild contamination issues. The 2011 court case asserted that this was possible but could not provide a single example. Given how widely-touted the Schmeisser case is among anti-GMO circles, you’d think that if there was a real example of contamination leading to a lawsuit, we’d hear about it. We don’t. Monsanto has made it perfectly clear that they’re not going after contamination, and the case law from the 2011 lawsuit seems to imply that if they did, they’d lose.
Are Americans generally aware that Genetically Modified plants are regarded with horror in Europe and other places? In NZ the government nearly lost an election in 2005 because experimental GM corn escaped the scientists paddock.
There is a real fear that poor people (African/South American farmers) will become peons because they get enticed and then trapped into buying Monsanto seed. Saving seed for next year was a 10,000 year old habit but now that breaks the law.
Manipulating a genetic structure can have unexpected consequences yea unto the furtherest allele.
I live in the Munich area. One of the political advertisements I saw each day on my way home from college earlier this fall was from Die Grüne - it was a field of corn, with ears stamped with “biohazard” symbols. Stupidest shit I’ve seen in a while. It’s a disturbing fact that a lot of people, especially in Europe, are beyond clueless about GMOs.
But nobody would force them to re-buy it. They’re free to buy other seeds. And if they can’t afford those, then they sure as hell aren’t getting Monsanto’s seeds.
And a butterfly flapping it’s wing in Mexico can cause typhoons in Japan. That doesn’t mean it will. The claims that GMOs might be dangerous are technically true but functionally baseless. All the research we’ve done indicates quite strongly that no, in fact, the unexpected consequences are all but non-existent.
There is a certain group of people that regard ALL big corporations as evil. There are simply different flavors of evil. For retail, the headliner is Walmart; for energy, you’ve got BP; for food, you’ve got Monsanto; etc.
