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“Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

worldsensorium.com

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Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#181

Post by pacetherace »

topynate wrote: post #171

Trying to work out what's going wrong in the cases this article describes, such that the principle "you can't patent something that exists" apparently doesn't apply. Is it that an independent breeder develops a certain strain, say red salad, and then a big company makes a modification to that strain, and patents the modification, such that the independent breeder is prevented somehow from continuing to develop red sa…

The cases that the article talks about (broccoli and red carrot), the researchers shared the seeds/plants with other researchers without applying for any patents or open disclosures. I don't think Seminis is really saying that they can't make it anymore, rather the issue is that for a common farmer it is not worth planting something and worrying about a lawsuit from Monsanto/Seminis to prove they provence of the seeds.

With open source seeds, 1. The farmer knows that they there are no legal issues with using specfic seeds 2. The onus is on Seminis to prove that their seed is not a derivative of open-source seed, which means they have to file a lawsuit against a non-profit (hopefully well funded) instead of a lone farmer

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#182

Post by Anarch157a »

somenameforme wrote: post #155
HDThoreaun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Yes it sucks for farmers, but I can't see how it has been anything other than absolute boon for humanity.

Apologies for the excess of links below. I find posts that spam links annoying, but if somebody believes GM products have saved millions/billions of lives, then they won't (and shouldn't) believe rando internet guy, and all the points are pretty distinct. --- GMOs were first made available in 1994 [1]. You can find data on famine deaths over time here [2]. Global famine deaths were near zero per 100k before GMOs had…

We don't use that much corn to make ethanol here in Brazil. The share of corn in our ethanol production is only 13% of the total[1], the rest is from sugar cane. According to the research institute Embrapa, most of our corn is for human or animal consumption.

As for your affirmation that it sucks for fuel, the growth of corn as a competitor for sugar cane in the production of ethanol here in Brazil is not "thanks to government regulation". In our country, sugar cane farmers have a lot more pull with the government than corn farmers. If government meddling was an issue, it would make the use of corn as a source of ethanol more difficult, not easier.

If ethanol producers here are turning to corn, is because it has economical benefits.

--- [1] https://digital.agrishow.com.br/graos/etanol-de-milho-como-e...

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#183

Post by bitcharmer »

rowanajmarshall wrote: post #164
freddref wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give us an example where a smaller company was successful in court against a much larger corp?

Nearly a decade ago but this: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=54cf4b4f-ccb4... Nestle has around 276,000 employees today, while Dualit seems to have around 100-200 (hard to tell since Dualit is private).

And for one case of a small entity successfully defending against a Behemoth there's hundreds of cases where it was the exact opposite.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#184

Post by lend000 »

efitz wrote: post #56

Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations. We should just end patents, period.

The main problem is that most patents last 20 years. To fix the problem, durations should be dramatically reduced (60% reduction would be a good start) and there should be provisions to protect against patent trolls, i.e. that your lawsuit if frivolous UNLESS you are either the original inventor or can prove an active attempt to commercialize the technology.

There is some good to intellectual property -- it's more of a tuning problem that is currently tuned for the slow moving 1800's.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#185

Post by twblalock »

rqtwteye wrote: post #166
efitz wrote: post #56

Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations. We should just end patents, period.

"Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations." I often think that the bigger a company or wealthier a person is they should get less things like tax deductions, patent protection, subsidies and a lot of others.

Penalizing success is a great way to destroy innovation along with the rest of the economy.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#186

Post by ElijahLynn »

wnevets wrote: post #102
efitz wrote: post #56

Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations. We should just end patents, period.

Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. If we need to reform patents, maybe it should be based on revenue generated. Once a company has been successfully "incentivized" for their "innovation" the patent expires sooner.

The https://openinventionnetwork.com/ exists now too, to make defensive patents for those who want to open source their patents but keep a big corp from attacking after stealing an idea/patent.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#187

Post by akhosravian »

freddref wrote: post #140
wnevets wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. If we need to reform patents, maybe it should be based on revenue generated. Once a company has been successfully "incentivized" for their "innovation" the patent expires sooner.

Can you give us an example where a smaller company was successful in court against a much larger corp?

This is the business model of patent trolls.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#188

Post by weberer »

burkaman wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he got sued by the patent holding company for using those seeds and then spraying them with Roundup , which would have killed off his crop had they not been the patented seeds. This is true of all the cases of people being sued for cultivating "Roundup-Ready" crops: the story they want to tell is that they were sued for cultivating seeds that accidentally wound up on their fields, but the facts established at tri…

> the story they want to tell is that they were sued for cultivating seeds that accidentally wound up on their fields, but the facts established at trial were that, however the seeds ended up there, the farmers deliberately exploited the patented system. I don't understand the distinction you're making. "cultivating seeds" and "deliberately exploiting the patented system" mean the same thing in this case. Spraying th…

>Spraying them with Roundup is how you cultivate them.

Roundup is a herbicide. It kills normal plants. Monsanto sells seeds that were genetically modified to resist it. It doesn't make any sense to spray it on natural plants.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#189

Post by hammock »

wnevets wrote: post #177
hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>maybe it should be based on revenue generated The pitfall there is that there is no guarantee of revenue. You also invite the possibility of predatorily delaying revenue generation. Potential revenue generated would be more on the nose. In another sense, sustaining a patent until it generates sufficient revenue can be seen as oxymoronic to the idea that patents incent products that serve the public interest - since,…

You wouldn't need to get rid of the current limits, just expire the patent sooner. If a company generates $10 Billion dollars in the first 5 years of their 20 year patent the reminding 15 years isn't necessary to incentivize innovation. Rewarding innovation has been archived, just skip ahead to the part where the public at large benefits.

So a cap on patent revenues, with ensuing expiration

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#190

Post by cptskippy »

bheadmaster wrote: post #126
wnevets wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents are still being used to protect smaller companies from much larger corporations. Allowing these large corporations to legally ignore patents will only make things worse for the rest of us. If we need to reform patents, maybe it should be based on revenue generated. Once a company has been successfully "incentivized" for their "innovation" the patent expires sooner.

In theory, yes. In practice, the big companies usually have a ton of vague questionable defensive patents that cover a huge space of "inventions", so even if the smaller companies try to sue, they will get avalanched by an array of patent suits that could potentially bankrupt the company.

Exactly. Companies file and retain patents that aren't defensible or questionable for defensive purposes. Perhaps the patents won't hold up in court but given enough of them you can bankrupt someone before they can prove them all invalid.
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