

Battling the ‘Monsanto law’ in Ghana - givan
http://newint.org/blog/2014/10/20/plant-breeders-bill-ghana/#sthash.RCRTmcol.dpuf

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shawndrost
I'm an environmentalist and a humanitarian, and I want both of these things:

1\. Freedom for Ghanaian farmers to plant their traditional crops. 2\. Access
for Ghanaian farmers to high-yield varietals developed by companies like
Monsanto.

This article implies that the law makes goal #1 illegal, but if you read
closely, it is just an implication, and not an outright statement. My current
understanding is that goal #1 is not made illegal by this bill. Does anyone
have any contradictory evidence?

My understanding of this law is that it adopts US-style IP laws for
agriculture, which is a controversial idea. Supporters would say it creates
incentives towards goal #2, because it's hard for Monsanto to sell self-
reproducing technology at a profit without IP support. Detractors would say
that it has other downsides. I don't think the detractors are wrong, but I
have a question for anyone that's open to exchange views:

If you oppose this law, but support goal #2, what do you think will bring
Monsanto into Ghana? I only see three options: a) this law, b) Monsanto writes
Ghana off as a loss and sells their unprotectable technology, c) we legally
compel Monsanto to write Ghana off as a loss.

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tartuffe78
The issue in the U.S. is that flowering plants seeds travel by wind. So farmer
A who bought Monsanto seeds infects farmer Bs field, who then can no longer
legally harvest the seeds from field B because they contain Monsanto IP. Not
sure if this applies to crops in Ghana, but its true in the US.

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hga
No, it is not true in the US, which you will learn if you read the rest of
this discussion.

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jacquesm
Last night there was a fantastic story about C4 Rice here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365)

In one of the comments a user said:

"What is the plan to deal with the backlash from uneducated people screaming
about how bad GMO is?"

If you're wondering why that backlash is as strong as it is look no further
than the kind of legal trickery on display here.

Monsanto is about as evil as it gets in the corporate arena, just one step
below the likes of Bechtel.

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DenisM
It's easy for the farmers to stay out of Monsanto's way - don't use Monsanto
seeds, stick to the seeds they have used before Monsanto came about.

A law reserving proliferation of GM seeds to inventors is no different than
law preserving copyright in software. How can one support the latter and
oppose the former?

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jacquesm
Please read the article. It's about laws specifically created to stop farmers
from saving seeds so they'll have to buy them from 'approved' sources.

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shoyer
Really? The article talks about what external parties _think_ about why these
laws are being written, but doesn't any provide any direct evidence. And none
of those even talk about "approved" sources.

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paulvs
Technically all things have APIs, but some need API keys.
[http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg)

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bovermyer
Could someone please tell me why intellectual property protection should even
be a thing?

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skosuri
Why would any commercial entity invest in things like drug development, crop
development, etc; if the moment they actually bring something to market it's
trivially copied and sold at cost?

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bovermyer
I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted; it's an honest quesiton. Why does a
business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a
thing?

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hga
Errr, "a particular implementation of a thing" cannot be patented. It might be
copyrightable (in the US, things with no creative content like a telephone
book cannot be protected by copyright).

GMOs are much more like inventions protectable by patents than creative works,
like, say, an artificial form of life based on silicon. Not entirely different
in principle than building a machine out of different mostly pre-fab parts,
the combination of which is an invention.

