Farmer plants GM feed soybeans, Monsanto sues him.

The Supreme Court to decide if it's legal for a farmer to buy seeds and plant them.

A farmer named Hugh Bowman bought soybean seeds not from the seed store but from the feed store -- soybeans being sold for feeding to livestock. He planted them.

Most of those feed soybeans were GMOs created by Monsanto. So Monsanto sued Bowman, saying they own the DNA in those soybeans, and therefore can tell farmers like Bowman what to do with the soybeans they buy.

To over-simplify, farmer Bowman's argument is that when he buys something, he should have the right to do whatever he wants with it.

Monsanto's argument is that when Bowman plants seeds developed by Monsanto, he is making an illegal copy of their invention.

I think that Monsanto can go fuck themselves. On the other hand I'm not really sure it's responsible to take genetically modified soy beans made for consumption by animals and go planting them in the ground by some random farmer. I don't realistically know what could happen but I do know that what can go wrong will go wrong.

How'd they find out he planted them?

You might think that the idea that Monsanto randomly buys up lots of competitors' products just to test them is silly, but that's precisely what they do.

Some of their products also have a tendency to drop enough pollen that they have found it worthwhile just to sue anyone downwind of their customers.

And I honestly wouldn't put it past them to check the crops of anyone who buys their beans for food and check the food of anyone who buys their beans for planting.

Monsanto are some real sons of bitches.

Monsanto is one really evil company. Interesting that the Supremes would take this one on, as the Fed Circuit panel ruled 3-0 in favor of Monsanto...until lately, the Supremes have left patent issues like this alone, except if the Fed Circuit has had some dissent in it.

This has patent flavor to it, but the real issue at hand is really one of IP licenses/contract. And there does seem to be a contractual loop hole that Bowman was taking advantage of (and since Monsanto wrote the contract, ambiguity in the contract will work against them usually). Monsanto requires the farmers who use their roundup ready seeds to sign a license agreement, agreeing not to replant progeny for commercial use. But in this case, they allow farmers to sell the progeny, which is what Bowman was doing. And then he'd rebuy seeds from the place he sold it to. Moving forward, win or lose for Monsanto, expect them to just close that loophole in the license agreement (cannot replant OR SELL progeny). He may win this now, but he's going to lose in the end. Not to mention what a potential ruling could do to the biotech world...

He told them (it's in the article buried in the wall of text). You really just have to love the balls and the honesty of Bowman.

The Fed Circuit opinion is worth a read if you're interested in this kind of thing. And unlike the eventual opinion from SCOTUS, it's pretty short. See page 6 of the opinion for the discussion of the Tech license.

I'm surprised Monsanto hasn't found a way to GM its feed soybeans to keep them from reproducing into plants.

And fuck Monsanto.

Fucking Monsanto. Ever since the documentary on them in Food, Inc., I rage out whenever I hear this sort of shit. It's absolutely insane that farmers that use their seeds, can't reuse the seeds from the resulting crop. They have to buy more from Monsanto. It's disgusting.

Not to interrupt the "Fuck Monsanto" brigade, since I don't and probably can't have a dog in that fight, but somehow I doubt farmers are required to use Monsanto's seed in the first place.

The reason Monsanto's seeds are used is that they are herbicide-resistant. You'd be looking at a much lower yield or possible entire crop destruction if you couldn't use herbicides. It bothers the fuck out of me that Monsanto has made it so the farming industry cannot stay self-sufficient, by forbidding the farmers from using the seeds gained from any Monsanto-grown plant. That means that every harvest, you have to dump all the seeds/beans and can't use them for anything. If you do, Monsanto sues the fuck out of you, and always wins. They make a ton of money on litigation and have bankrupted hundreds of farms.

So, tl;dr, you don't have to use Monsanto seeds, but if you want any decent chance of competing with the crops of farmers that do, you'd better.

Does nobody else make herbicide-resistant seeds?

Also, if the pollen drifts from Monsanto crops and you end up with plants that have the same DNA, they sue you for it.

As for other herbicide-resistant seeds... Well, no. Monsanto manufactures the most popular herbicide and the seeds that have the herbicide-resistant trait.

So first, the Monsanto herbicides that your neighbors use drift over and kill off some of your crop. Next, some of your surviving crop gets pollinated by your neighbors' Monsanto plants, which prompts Monsanto to sue you. In the end, Monsanto seizes your property, kills your dog, and sends you and your family to labor in the salt mines. As a result, Monsanto becomes a leaner, more efficient global competitor, which means we all win.

More elegantly put than me!

There's sort of an interesting economic problem embedded into all this.

What happens in a world where farmers can use Monsanto-offspring? Well, Monsanto goes out of business pretty quickly. Maybe we do or don't care about that, but certainly that pretty much means nobody will ever bother creating an herbicide and a GM'd crop to go with that herbicide. Probably that sucks in the long term.

My guess is that Monsanto's GM crops should be treated like drugs: they get X years during which they're the exclusive provider and during which you can't use offspring crops. After X years it's fair game though.

That seems fair. I mean, we do need companies like Monsanto doing crop research and development, and they need to fund that somehow (selling their Roundup herbicide alone won't cover their needs). Unfortunately, it's doubtful this will ever happen.

Nonsense. People have been inventing things to make the world better for millenia, and profit is only one of any number of possible motivators to do so.

If I were a 15 year old kid who read this story, I might be seriously considering getting my degree in botany and genetics and making open-source GM seed stock as my PhD thesis, because what the fuck. And I bet there is, in fact, some 15 year old kid out there who's thinking exactly that.

I understand it when a GM crop company says "if you want our GM sees you have to sign a contract and promise to blah blah blah" but it's a pretty frightening notion that you can buy soybeans from some other random guy having never signed any contract and suddenly the company is like "Whoa you just stole our mojo!"

The only other thing that I can think of that's similar is the GPL.

My understanding of it is that if you use any GPL software in your own software it essentially contains a legal trojan that suddenly forces you to abide by the GPL for your own software.

Maybe these companies could encode a license agreement inside of the soybean DNA!

(If any company uses this idea they agree to pay me a billion dollars.)

They did; well they basically sterilized the seeds so the resultant plants couldn't reproduce. They called the "Terminator Gene" (and no, I'm not joking). Monsanto faced massive opposition so it was never commercialized.

Honestly...the "Terminator gene"? WTF Monsanto marketing. Is it even possible to sound more like a movie villain corporation?

Maybe! Certainly it's possible that altruism might win the day. Historically that's a dubious proposition, but it's always possible that this time it's different. Probably not, though.

From a policy perspective, this is actually a really fascinating problem. As far as I can tell, there are a few cases that policy needs to address. In order from least to most thorny, they are:
1) Standard usage. Farmer buys seeds, does not use further seeds. I am no legal expert, but this seems to be covered by current contract law; if you don't like it then don't buy the seeds. If that means you can't farm profitable, well, tough titties. That's how markets work. That being said, Monsanto is a monopoly player (apparently) and ought to be regulated as such in this situation. I wouldn't be averse to the gov't setting the price for seed.
2) The scenario that's the occasion for this thread, e.g., the seed "laundering" scenario. It pretty much seems to be a loophole in the current contract, and probably I guess you can address it via contracts. E.g., Monsanto specifies that any sale of the seeds be subject to certain restrictions that are always forward moving. Sorta like a GPL.
3) The pollen scenario. I have no idea what to do here, because I can see Monsanto's legit interest, but also the random farmer who just happens to have shit blown at him. I have no idea how this ought to be dealt with, and I think the current regime (wherein Monsanto sues the shit out of them) sucks and should be fixed. I have no idea how though; allowing free-blowing pollen basically puts Monsanto (and all private development of GM crops) out of business.

From there, there's also the legit question about whether or not Monsanto should have their monopoly in the first place. That gets into thorny questions and like I said, I think a time-limited monopoly is appropriate (spurs research, yay). You could always just say fuckit and have such development done entirely by the government, but that of course has its own attendant issues.

Elaboration on my last post: in theory I think you can structure the contract such that it requires any sale of progeny seeds to be subject to a forward-moving clause that guarantees no further planting. At that point, if seeds got into the wild you'd trace them back to whoever in the chain broke the contract and then that person has all the liability. As far as the seeds that get into the wild go, I guess you give the planter a free pass but he has to be subject to the same no-planting forward moving contract, otherwise he needs to burn his crop.

Plenty of people invent things because they're cool and useful and fun, but there's basically zero cases of someone spending 100 million dollars on experimental trials to prove said useful thing works. At a certain point gigantic standard profits capitalism is the only thing that scales.

[quote="jeffd, post: 464258, member: 620]I have no idea how though; allowing free-blowing pollen basically puts Monsanto (and all private development of GM crops) out of business. [/quote]

You know, if a business model only works if a company is able to sue people into bankruptcy over the direction of the wind, I'm ok with that business model dying.

Like I said ultimately I suspect you can craft a policy regime that doesn't involve wanton lawsuits based on wind patterns. We should look into doing so!

Jeff, regarding your post above. 1 is what is happening now. 2 is a loophole I'm sure they'll close in the license. And 3...they've tried to sue on this in the US before, and haven't been successful. The most success they had was in suing a Canadian farmer. In the US, it's been held generally as inadvertent.

Huh. Continuing to try and sue repeatedly is a pretty dick move, but it actually sounds like things are working roughly as expected / as I think they should.

Does anyone know if their monopoly over the GM crop is time-limited?

You don't think a government/non-profit funded model can produce useful inventions anymore? It'd certainly require more funding than we currently have, but I don't really see why it's impossible.

Than I.

/nazi

It could, it's just your standard "does the government do the research or investors" trade off. Really I just wanted to stress that "smart person comes up with something" is a tiny segment of the research pipeline.

Ok gotcha - I wasn't really thinking of some dude puttering around in his basement and curing AIDS, just that profit-funded research isn't the only avenue. It just happens to be what society has chosen for the moment.

Lemme know when that 15 year old starts up his Kickstarter.

Sounds like a job for a government-funded prize model to me. So a two-pronged approach:

1. Starting now, no new GM seeds will be protected by any form of IP law.

2. Government issues a bounty for a new weed killer that's at least as good as Roundup and a matching resistance gene. Best one gets filthy rich and the US government owns both of the results.

After that we could do whatever we wanted. My hippie-dippy side says just let farmers do what they want with the seeds because that's plants and Mother Earth wants to be free maaaaaaaaaan but for all I know the economic implications could be disastrous so whatever. Regardless, just trading our for-profit monopoly in this area for a government one seems like an improvement, if only because we'd be removing the enormous profit motive for being a stickler over every stray speck of pollen that ends up here or there.

Edit: I did a little looking in and Roundup (glyphosate) isn't even patented any more for all intents and purposes, and it is manufactured by any number of companies. So you could make the prize either to do what I said above or just to come up with a new gene resistance to glyphosate that can replace Monsanto's. If that's possible, I mean; given the state of patents lately I wouldn't be surprised if Monsanto had one for "glyphosate-resistant seeds by any means durr hurr."

This issue goes much further than just the legalities. There are monoculture issues and consequences that need to be considered as well. Ultimately having all the soy beans be of the same genetic strain is going have problems and we'll have lost the advantages that diversity brings. Monsanto's GM corn has shown up in southern Mexico and threatens the incredible corn diversity that exists there despite the fact that GM corn hasn't been planted there.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17843.cfm
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121213111851423855.html

Just anecdotal evidence of government and inventions, the NIH does a lot of the basic science research now for companies. But they often miss out on what will become extremely valuable inventions, and end up licensing them out for minimal amounts because they underestimate the commercial potential of the drugs. Two examples are Gardisil, licensed out to Merck, and Taxol, licensed out to BMS. Ron Wyden continually bangs on the NIH for undervaluing those products...see his press release on Taxol.

Pharmaceuticals is its only special mess.

Ain't that the truth, Jason.

This NPR article from last year contains a concise description of how Monsanto became so monolithic with Roundup and why it is hard for farmers to just not buy it anymore.

Also, it looks like Mother Nature is invoking a time limit to the patent. Unsurprisingly a wide ranging and sustained use of a single herbicide has begun to cultivate weeds with a resistance to glyphosate. Monsanto and other big-aggra/chemical firms are scrambling to create the next generation of herbicide and GM seed combos.

With any luck, as Roundup becomes less effective Monsanto will lose its monopoly as multiple replacements come to market which can be rotated rather than used exclusively.

The problem is that they're basically trying to dictate how nature works, and suing people over it. In this case, someone did something odder which I find an interesting legal concept. They bought functional seed in the form of feed, and planted it. Different than the drifting pollen problem.

I'm familiar with the idea in software licensing (you may not use this product to do X), but this amuses me in the idea of someone selling me a chicken and forbidding me from eating the left breast. The feed includes functional seeds. Banning the use of them just seems absurd. I'm presuming the reason to ban it is that the feed shop is selling the product cheaper than buying the equivalent amount of seed directly. But that seems to be more a sales issue than a farmer issue.

I guess in the end I'm not really sure how the SC is going to come down on this. It seems like a bad idea to have licenses automagically follow products that do not come with license notes attached, or to ban the use of component parts. Long term, I can't see Monsanto's business model surviving unless they alter Roundup to kill off last year's resistant strains.

The US Supreme Court had heard this case on Tuesday. ThinkProgress gives a primer on Monsanto and its legal practices.

If you were a 15 year old kid, then you weren't even born when Monsanto first introduced Roundup Ready.

There's been a lot of 15 year old kids since then who lacked either the inclination or resources to fight this battle for you. Don't hold your breath.

My father spent his career in govt and NGO plant research, mostly working on pulses The end of his career co-incided with the start of research into GM, he worked with the Max-Planck institute on field testing their stuff.

He was very well regarded, but ended up a cynic having started off as an idealist. He went out burning all bridges at age 52, giving a keynote speech at major conference which he said the whole non-profit thing was a waste of time & resources and they should give way to ICI and Monsanto. The bare bones of the argument was

- non-profit institutions are driven by non market incentives. Publishing record, and getting more grants, are the path to success. This doesn't get products into farmers' fields. The choice of research is politically motivated - he wasn't allowed to work on soybeans, because improving 3rd world soybean yields would impact first world farmers. Had to stick to subsistence crops
- Even if ICI are doing it for profit, at least they damn well had a rep out in the Punjab wheat fields educating & pushing farmers to use their stuff
- Farmers aren't stupid, if something makes economic sense, they'll use it. If it doesn't, they won't (a common problem with some of the better strains of plants his teams came up with by old fashioned breeding was that high yield, less pesticide etc but they tasted so bad that farmers couldn't make money)

So, I get that Monsanto are being dickheads. But effective dickheads.