Just to play devils advocate. What if you spent 10 years breeding an onion that always grows to 10lbs. You breed them over and over, using science and hard work and suddenly you have this superior thing that wouldn't exist without your work. Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse?
I'm not relating this in any way to this lawsuit, just your general idea that intellectual property should not apply to a living thing.
What if you spent 9 months making a baby, and then 20 years nurturing and feeding that baby. Suddenly you have this superior thing that wouldn't exist without your work. Clearly that result should be your intellectual property.
"The Quail?" Joe spluttered. "He's about the most powerful man in the country. He's your enemy?"
"Sort of. He can't have sex unless I allow it."
Joe decided that big business was not among his aptitudes.
"Years ago, the Quail received a gene augmentation that gave him enough charm to succeed despite his lack of intellect. Since I'm the one who invented his personality genes, I hold the copyright on his character. The Quail can't reproduce without my permission. Nor can he retransmit or rebroadcast his genes without the expressed, written consent of WonkaGen Inc."
Suppose you are then forbidden from growing this onion yourself, because in breeding it, you accidentally infringed on some of the many, many patents and protections on plant breeds?
You can't copyright clothing designs and fashion designers are still in business.
> Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse?
Yes. If you want to get paid to improve onions, get paid for work you will do not work you have done (research grants, onion growers associations, etc). Rent-seeking by owning living things' genetics is, I think, immoral. Rent-seeking, in general, that is patterns that allow you to do one-time work to get perpetual rights to future income is immoral when it passes a certain threshold.
Also to tack onto this, when I was at my first job a PhD related the following story to me:
When he was getting his doctorate his advisor was investigating several proteins that might do fun brain things and handed the specific testing of each off to a different doctoral candidate, one of those proteins ended up being super interesting and netting the candidate a good deal of clout and a foot in the door for high funded research - it was not his.
So rent-seeking compensation for innovations will over-compensate the winners, but the losers who sunk just as much time into research will be deprived of any compensation.
If it is being used or modified with regards to a wild virus doing virus things, yes. (no isolating and patenting a wild virus, vaccines, or research into wild virus and variations)
If it is being used as a machine to edit genetics as a way to patent genes, then yes.
If it is being used as a machine to do something less life related, maybe not.
You can't copyright clothing designs and fashion designers are still in business.
Actually, you can as of 2017, in a specific set of circumstances:
In a 6–2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. in which it held that aspects of Varsity Brands Inc.’s cheerleading uniform designs are protectable under the U.S. Copyright Act.
> You can't copyright clothing designs and fashion designers are still in business.
But, as they are useful articles
(why copyright doesn't apply in general, though it can apply to specific decorative elements—software, apparently, isn't generally useful), you can patent clothing designs and design elements, with the same non-obviousness, etc., rules applicable to other patents of useful invention. So that's kind of an odd argument to use against patentability of a useful article.
I feel like we in society can solve this without going to the lengths of patenting life forms - we could just instead make sure the people who did the inventing are properly rewarded using a softer good than currency and invest into general research - both of these things tend to benefit society quite a bit in the long run.
Honestly, being able to have some protection over that (though likely not for long) seems reasonable to me.
The challenge (to me) comes down to all of the weird edge cases that come up when you try to actually implement that protection.
- Keeping some portion of harvested product to plant next year is how we've farmed since we started farming. Is that now illegal? Does it require a licensing fee?
- Some seeds blow in the wind, now the northern 10% of your neighbours plot has the fancy seed you paid for and they didn't. Are they "breaking the law"? What happens if they save some % of that seed for next year, is that doubly illegal?
- If a consumer of the produce saves the seeds, then plants them in their own garden, are they breaking the law?
These things all get really ugly really fast. The fact that the IP owner is usually Goliath, and the farmer David certainly doesn't help the IP owner's case in the minds of the public.
So while I am in theory a fan of recognizing the effort that went into your onion, I find a lot of the repercussions of trying to protect your IP so distasteful I might not be willing to accept them.
If you want to employ the cops to protect all your hard work, work on something that is patentable, copyrightable, or trademarkable.
Selective breeding is not patentable. Literally millennia of prior art. So instead build a brand based around a 10# onion, and protect the trademark rather than the biological variety. When customers demand "Bowling Bulb" branded 10# onions, produce managers will buy yours instead of the generic knockoff, or charge and pay extra for the onions with your logo stickered on them.
Or pull a dirty trick, such that there is an external factor to the onion growth, aside from the onion's own DNA, such as saturating the test and production plots with a chemical not normally required for onions, and breeding in dependence on supplementary fertilization, or breed in dependence on a specific pollinator. You have no choice but to sell the onion as is. You don't have to tell anyone else how to successfully grow it, or let them rent your species of onion-pollinating bee.
Throughout most of human history, most populations have faced famine at least one year out of ten, more often in marginal areas (the Israelites planned for one year out of seven, according to the Bible). Sorry, that is not "working quite well" by any reasonable definition.
You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature.
Modern “Industrial level selective breeding” (which frequently uses a variety of mutagens to maximize the frequency and magnitude of genetic changes to select from) is distinguished from transgenics as a method of inducing genetic change largely by the fact that it's a lot less controlled as to what is going on beyond the targeted trait.
It's kind of odd to scaremonger about organisms whose DNA is a result of transgenic modification but to be okay about those whose DNA is a result of modern industrial selective breeding.
> You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature.
Way to conflate advances in machinery, irrigation, botany, herbicides and fertilizers in the last century with selective breeding. Take those out and we would have famines now too.
The thing is, if it is using traditional selection processes, then all the researcher is doing is discovering a naturally occuring set of genes that have a desired effect. This is no different than if someone randomly discovers a new lifeform in their yard, they can't claim exclusive rights over all descendants of that lifeform. The amount of work someone puts into it has no bearing on patentability.
Same thing as if an astronomer points a telescope to a patch of sky that has never been observed. Can they own exclusive rights to the image, and prevent others from pointing their telescopes to that same patch to make their own image? What if that astronomer spent 10 years looking at different galaxies and other astro objects, to find that one nebula that has artistic value?
> The thing is, if it is using traditional selection processes, then all the researcher is doing is discovering a naturally occuring set of genes that have a desired effect.
OK. What if the researcher instead engages in genetic engineering and produces an onion that is gene-for-gene identitcal and indeed exhibits the behavior? Should that result be protectable?
What if bees transfer these genes to your field next to customer that bought those special seeds? Should you worry about using seeds from your field due to possible legal issues?
Medicine Man [0] is a 1992 movie about a researcher who discovers a species of ant which has cancer-curing properties. As a teenager at the time I thought, "Why doesn't some pharmaceutical company simply test every ant species to find a cancer cure?".
Today my answer to my younger self would be, "Because there are thousands of ant species and the company couldn't patent its discovery, so there is no incentive to conduct such expensive research"
> Just to play devils advocate. What if you spent 10 years breeding an onion that always grows to 10lbs. You breed them over and over, using science and hard work and suddenly you have this superior thing that wouldn't exist without your work. Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse?
Imagine if you spent the last ten years discovering pennicillin, and then, by virtue of not encumbering your discovery with patents, saved anywhere between 80 and 200 million lives.
You might have the right to protect your specific process of breeding that variety of onion. But if you then sell the seeds to grow that onion you've sold the ability to grow that onion to another person. It's intrinsic to what an onion is. You could argue the only legal way to protect it would be to only sell the onion products and never the seeds or bulbs yourself.
The heart of the article: "PepsiCo has invoked Section 64 of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Act, 2001 to claim infringement of its rights. However, farmers groups cite Section 39 of the same Act, which specifically says that a farmer is allowed “to save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share or sell his farm produce including seed of a variety protected under this Act” so long as he does not sell “branded seed”.
Targeting the poor who are breaking the law and intending to profit from it. It's not like there are no other potato varieties in the world. In fact I'm sure regular potato seeds are cheaper than Lay potato seeds.
> It's not like there are no other potato varieties in the world.
Patenting living organisms should not be allowed. It effectively gives a corporation veto power on the reproductive process of a plant or animal by making it illegal to allow that plant or animal to reproduce without permission. This flies in the face of basic biology, evolution, and agricultural practice.
The article says that the farmers had either bought the seed from other farmers who had grown the crop before and held some seeds or that they had themselves held back seed from growing the crop.
The case seems to revolve around whether they are allowed to do under Indian law.
I often think (worry?) that this would be great material for a dystopian sci-fi novel. Something about a rogue strain of engineered DNA killing all the crops and leaving the world foodless. Kinda like the ice in Cat's Cradle.
This is the kind of bullshit that infuriates me as a farmer and the only reason for me not to use GMOs and whichever patented cultivars. The rights of farmers to resow has (and must have!) precedence over intellectual or property rights.
These strategies have taken place in the past with GMOs, and I suspect will happen again.
Branded seed sowing can be subject to some restrictions for a single contract and crop for the purpose of the destination of the produce, but the extent of those restrictions should stop there and should not apply to 2nd generation seeds or their crops.
I've had my share of shady contracts with 10 year long confidentiality agreements. Never again.
It was a seed multiplication contract. I'm pretty sure I cannot name the company or plant, or any other specifics.
NDA's are useful for signing contracts with neighbouring farmers so that they cannot argue against differential treatment regarding prices. Of course everybody knows who is being paid what, but no one can officially complain.
Thank you. It's not the specifics I'm interested in, but the generalities, like what the NDA's are used for, and what makes them shady (other than silencing people). Are there other reasons for them, besides hiding prices?
All of this belongs in the same bucket as the John Deere (and others) 'no right to repair or modify' bucket.
I never approved of this concept with iPhones, where Apple clearly asserts residual ownership of the phone; and the same concept with Tesla, where parts and repairs can't be done by third parties. Nope, nope, and nope. Find another way. I have a superseding right as a voter and citizen to petition a legislative alternative to certain nonsensical free market outcomes.
67 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadI'm not relating this in any way to this lawsuit, just your general idea that intellectual property should not apply to a living thing.
Once we can, I'm sure someone's going to try to make a Michael Phelps or Barry Bonds.
"Sort of. He can't have sex unless I allow it."
Joe decided that big business was not among his aptitudes.
"Years ago, the Quail received a gene augmentation that gave him enough charm to succeed despite his lack of intellect. Since I'm the one who invented his personality genes, I hold the copyright on his character. The Quail can't reproduce without my permission. Nor can he retransmit or rebroadcast his genes without the expressed, written consent of WonkaGen Inc."
http://www.joelbenford.plus.com/teabowl/byauthor/wonka.htm
But if you change it sligthly to owning copyright over some dog breed, that emotional objection would dissipate in my opinion.
So if someone were to cross two or three breeds of dogs and make a stable, new breed, can that someone patent it and own it?
What about every single pup that is eventually born? Can the breeder claim intellectual property rights over it?
Of course this is nonsense, but some companies will try and are trying their luck.
> Is it ok if someone were to take your onions and begin growing them without discourse?
Yes. If you want to get paid to improve onions, get paid for work you will do not work you have done (research grants, onion growers associations, etc). Rent-seeking by owning living things' genetics is, I think, immoral. Rent-seeking, in general, that is patterns that allow you to do one-time work to get perpetual rights to future income is immoral when it passes a certain threshold.
When he was getting his doctorate his advisor was investigating several proteins that might do fun brain things and handed the specific testing of each off to a different doctoral candidate, one of those proteins ended up being super interesting and netting the candidate a good deal of clout and a foot in the door for high funded research - it was not his.
So rent-seeking compensation for innovations will over-compensate the winners, but the losers who sunk just as much time into research will be deprived of any compensation.
Patents on genetics are term limited, not perpetual.
If it is being used as a machine to edit genetics as a way to patent genes, then yes.
If it is being used as a machine to do something less life related, maybe not.
Actually, you can as of 2017, in a specific set of circumstances:
In a 6–2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. in which it held that aspects of Varsity Brands Inc.’s cheerleading uniform designs are protectable under the U.S. Copyright Act.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/supreme-court-copyright...
But, as they are useful articles (why copyright doesn't apply in general, though it can apply to specific decorative elements—software, apparently, isn't generally useful), you can patent clothing designs and design elements, with the same non-obviousness, etc., rules applicable to other patents of useful invention. So that's kind of an odd argument to use against patentability of a useful article.
The challenge (to me) comes down to all of the weird edge cases that come up when you try to actually implement that protection.
- Keeping some portion of harvested product to plant next year is how we've farmed since we started farming. Is that now illegal? Does it require a licensing fee?
- Some seeds blow in the wind, now the northern 10% of your neighbours plot has the fancy seed you paid for and they didn't. Are they "breaking the law"? What happens if they save some % of that seed for next year, is that doubly illegal?
- If a consumer of the produce saves the seeds, then plants them in their own garden, are they breaking the law?
These things all get really ugly really fast. The fact that the IP owner is usually Goliath, and the farmer David certainly doesn't help the IP owner's case in the minds of the public.
So while I am in theory a fan of recognizing the effort that went into your onion, I find a lot of the repercussions of trying to protect your IP so distasteful I might not be willing to accept them.
Selective breeding is not patentable. Literally millennia of prior art. So instead build a brand based around a 10# onion, and protect the trademark rather than the biological variety. When customers demand "Bowling Bulb" branded 10# onions, produce managers will buy yours instead of the generic knockoff, or charge and pay extra for the onions with your logo stickered on them.
Or pull a dirty trick, such that there is an external factor to the onion growth, aside from the onion's own DNA, such as saturating the test and production plots with a chemical not normally required for onions, and breeding in dependence on supplementary fertilization, or breed in dependence on a specific pollinator. You have no choice but to sell the onion as is. You don't have to tell anyone else how to successfully grow it, or let them rent your species of onion-pollinating bee.
Totally untrue. New plant varieties can be patented regardless of how they are produced.
You really should look into the massive increases in agricultural productivity over the course of the 20th Century before making blanket statements of this nature.
It's kind of odd to scaremonger about organisms whose DNA is a result of transgenic modification but to be okay about those whose DNA is a result of modern industrial selective breeding.
Way to conflate advances in machinery, irrigation, botany, herbicides and fertilizers in the last century with selective breeding. Take those out and we would have famines now too.
Same thing as if an astronomer points a telescope to a patch of sky that has never been observed. Can they own exclusive rights to the image, and prevent others from pointing their telescopes to that same patch to make their own image? What if that astronomer spent 10 years looking at different galaxies and other astro objects, to find that one nebula that has artistic value?
OK. What if the researcher instead engages in genetic engineering and produces an onion that is gene-for-gene identitcal and indeed exhibits the behavior? Should that result be protectable?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-monsanto-lawsuit/kans...
No, because living organisms should not be patentable/protectable.
Today my answer to my younger self would be, "Because there are thousands of ant species and the company couldn't patent its discovery, so there is no incentive to conduct such expensive research"
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Man_(film)
But what they do with it afterwards is not your business.
Imagine if you spent the last ten years discovering pennicillin, and then, by virtue of not encumbering your discovery with patents, saved anywhere between 80 and 200 million lives.
https://www.nabard.org/auth/writereaddata/tender/1608180417N...
Patenting living organisms should not be allowed. It effectively gives a corporation veto power on the reproductive process of a plant or animal by making it illegal to allow that plant or animal to reproduce without permission. This flies in the face of basic biology, evolution, and agricultural practice.
So did the farmers "steal" the potatoes used for lays chips, or did they have no choice in their selection due to factors?
Monsanto's sterile "terminator seeds" technology are a great example of this same issue.
The case seems to revolve around whether they are allowed to do under Indian law.
I burned through the top 100 sci-fi books (audiobook versions, but still) in 2015. Somehow this wasn't on the list.
These strategies have taken place in the past with GMOs, and I suspect will happen again.
Branded seed sowing can be subject to some restrictions for a single contract and crop for the purpose of the destination of the produce, but the extent of those restrictions should stop there and should not apply to 2nd generation seeds or their crops.
I've had my share of shady contracts with 10 year long confidentiality agreements. Never again.
Indian farmers have all my sympathy and support.
The plague of NDAs has moved to farming? Is there anything more you're allowed to say on the matter?
NDA's are useful for signing contracts with neighbouring farmers so that they cannot argue against differential treatment regarding prices. Of course everybody knows who is being paid what, but no one can officially complain.
So I'm assuming it's Monsanto, then
I never approved of this concept with iPhones, where Apple clearly asserts residual ownership of the phone; and the same concept with Tesla, where parts and repairs can't be done by third parties. Nope, nope, and nope. Find another way. I have a superseding right as a voter and citizen to petition a legislative alternative to certain nonsensical free market outcomes.