
75-year-old soybean farmer sees Monsanto lawsuit reach U.S. Supreme Court - mehrshad
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/09/75-year-old-soybean-farmer-sees-monsanto-lawsuit-reach-u-s-supreme-court/
======
cduan
So here's what I gather, after having read the lower court opinion and several
of the briefs.

Monsanto owns a patent on certain soybean seeds. They sell 1G seeds to
farmers, allowing the farmers to grow them into 2G seeds. The farmers are not
licensed to plant the 2G seeds. Bowman bought some 2G seeds and planted them,
and Monsanto sued.

Bowman says that the planting of 2G seeds is permitted under the doctrine of
"patent exhaustion." According to that doctrine, if a patented physical object
is sold under proper license, then a patent lawsuit involving that same
physical object is not permitted, even if the object is sold to someone else.

The lower court said that patent exhaustion doesn't apply to the 2G seeds,
because Monsanto only granted a license on the 1G seeds. The 1G seeds are not
the same physical object as the 2G seeds.

At first I thought this was a simple case, but Bowman is making a very
interesting argument in the Supreme Court. It is based on an old case called
Quanta.

In Quanta, the patent was directed to a certain computer process, and the
patent owner sold computer chips with circuitry for performing that process.
The chips themselves were useless, of course, but they just needed to be
combined with some standard hardware and turned on to work. Did this mean
that, by adding the extra hardware, a new physical object had been made that
could be the subject of a lawsuit? The Supreme Court said no: because the
chips "embodied" the patented invention and only required standard hardware to
be added, the chips invoked patent exhaustion, so lawsuits based on their
further use were barred.

Bowman's argument: the 1G seeds "embody" the invention (by having the DNA and
biological machinery to produce 2G seeds), and only "standard hardware" (soil,
watering, etc.) needs to be added to get the working invention (the 2G seeds),
so therefore the 2G seeds fall under patent exhaustion.

The main counterargument is that in Quanta, the original computer chips were
still present and intact, whereas the 2G seeds do not include the 1G seeds
intact. This requires a narrower interpretation of Quanta, and I could see the
Supreme Court going with either this narrower reading or Bowman's broader one.

(For fun, you can try to come up with hypothetical cases that are in between:
what if the patentee in Quanta had sold semiconductor masks for making chips?)

~~~
jacquesm
What bothers me is that there are people that would spend a lot of time and
effort on splitting legal hairs over this, rather than to simply state that
such patents are ridiculous and then we can all get on with our lives. This
whole patenting of natural organisms is disgusting at a fundamental level.

~~~
skosuri
They aren't patenting natural organisms. In this case, they are patenting
specific modifications that provides glyophosphate resistance. This is a
fairly legit patent, and if you don't believe this should occur; then
basically any patent modifying organisms should be banned, which will have far
reaching consequences not just to agriculture, but medicine, bioenergy,
chemicals, and biomaterials.

~~~
jrs235
They are not patenting specific modifications, they are patenting certain DNA
sequences. These patents as completely bogus. Monsanto also has a patent for a
certain DNA sequence found in hogs/pigs that causes them to produce more meat.
The DNA sequence was naturally found in a certain breed/line of hogs/pigs in
Germany and Monsanto has gone after the farmers that have these pigs, which
have been raised naturally for generations, and sued them to make them pay for
their pigs having a certain DNA sequence. It's ludicrous!

EDIT: One could say that those pigs could be considered prior art... even so,
you have a multibillion multinational company vs several small family farmers.
Who's going to pay the lawyers to defend the family farmers... even to show
prior "art"? What realm of delusion and craziness do we have to go to stop
arguing about this?

EDIT 2: "patenting specific modifications" tries to imply patenting a process,
and fails. "patenting certain DNA sequences" implies patenting the end result
of a process.

EDIT 3: I don't have a problem with them having a patent on a particular
process to generate the DNA sequences so long as the process reliably results
in the organism having the desired DNA sequence. Otherwise the patent would be
for a generic process to modify DNA sequences. These patents restrict the use
of the methods but not the end results. Monsanto wants to charge and claim
ownership of any organism that has the desired DNA sequences. Monsantos
business model is flawed and the patent system should not be used to protect
Monsantos revenue streams.

~~~
Androsynth
This is a good example of why patenting a process is acceptable, but patenting
the end result is bad.

If Monsanto patented the process itself to create these dna sequences, the
German farmers would not be infringing on their patent because they use
completely different processes to produce the DNA: one is generated in a lab,
the other is consummated in a sty.

If Monsanto found this strain of DNA and managed to reproduce it in a lab and
developed a process of mass production, there is no reason they should not be
able to profit from the endeavor. There is also no reason why they should be
able to sue the farmers. The farmers aren't using their process for producing
the dna sequences.

The fact that they could patent the sequences and sue the farmers speaks
volumes about the broken state of patents. (As most everyone in tech already
knew)

~~~
fleitz
How could a patent on a specific sequence withstand the machine transformation
test?

It would seem a patent on sequence only would be the patenting of
information/expression alone which would fall under copyright rather than
patent.

~~~
Androsynth
It probably wouldn't. Copyright in this situation isnt bad per se, but we've
all seen how much its been abused in practice, so clearly the moral/ethical
issues would be astounding.

------
DigitalSea
Don't get me started on the evil company that is Monsanto. For those of you
who aren't aware of the history of this company I strongly suggest you do some
reading if you have the time. We're talking about a company more aggressive
and protective of its patents than Apple or any tech company anyone has ever
seen before.

History has proven that the courts aren't exactly all too good at delivering
fair, unbiased and swift justice when it comes to a Monsanto vs (insert rural
farmer here) cases. I hope Bowman wins this case, it'll hopefully set a
precedent and example that Monsanto can't walk over family farmers trying to
make an honest living. Most of the prior cases Monsanto has brought against
farmers usually end up being settled because the defendant runs out of money
to keep fighting and ends up losing everything they own.

It's companies like Monsanto that are ruining family farming. If this
continues farming as we know it will cease to exist in the traditional sense
as we all know it and eventually the only farms that will exist will be
corporately owned ones.

~~~
dhathorn
Why is family farming worth protecting? What extra value do family farms
provide to me, the person actually buying food? People lose their jobs because
superior companies out-compete them all the time. Why should farmers be
protected from this?

~~~
smackay
The issue here is that farmers have been planting crops and saving some of the
seed generated for the next season probably from Day 1 in agriculture.
Monsanto seeks to insert themselves into this highly efficient process,
blocking the replanting of seed and instead extracting for themselves a
significant amount of money.

Farmers are free to enter into this relationship since the seeds do conver
some advantages in reduced use of pesticides etc. but there is a significant
problem with cross-contamination from neighboring crops and through the supply
chain so Monsanto ends up suing farmers who never had any intention to use
their products in order to get everyone to bow to their will and maintain the
agri-business model.

~~~
MarkMc
The Monsanto seeds are only beneficial if used with Roundup Ready pesticide
(or a generic equivalent). So let me ask you a hypothetical question: If
Monsanto's policy was to only sue farmers whose fields had been cross-
contaminated AND who used Roundup Ready pesticide, would that be a fair
outcome? It would mean farmers could still use their traditional methods
without worrying about cross-contamination as long as they didn't use the
Monsanto pesticide.

~~~
smackay
As far as I know Roundup is a general use herbicide. If it was only licensed
for use with Monsanto's GM products then I think Monsanto would have a case -
assuming there were equivalent non-Monsanto herbicides freely available. I
doubt Monsanto would be pretty happy about that however.

UPDATE: There was supposed to be some form of "terminator" gene included in
the GM products to explicitly prevent generation two seeds from being
replanted. I guess since we are talking about law-suits that did not really
work as expected.

~~~
ihnorton
Actually, after a serious public kerfuffle, Monsanto pledged not to use this
technology:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology)

------
dangrossman
IANAL: Why isn't patent exhaustion a solid defense to Monsanto's suits?

The anti-GMO documentaries I've seen have covered the "their seed blew into my
field" and "I bought seed and signed a contract to only sew it one season then
breached it" type lawsuits, but not this --

He's buying seed, from a third party, without signing any agreement with
Monsanto. That seed isn't even necessarily Monsanto's product, but from plants
that descended from those seeds. It may contain the patented genes, but those
genes only got there from the original _authorized_ sale of seed to whoever
owned the elevator.

The exhaustion doctrine says that a patent holder's rights end at the point of
an authorized sale. Once Apple sells you an iPad, you can do whatever you want
with that iPad, including selling it to someone else, and aren't infringing
the underlying patents the product implements.

So, why can Monsanto claim damages here?

~~~
eurleif
IANAL either, but perhaps the seeds being descendants of authorized seeds,
rather than authorized seeds, is the problem? It would be sort of like
duplicating your authorized iPad with a 3D printer.

~~~
veemjeem
Even if you had an amazing 3D printer that could produce iPads, that doesn't
mean you can sell it. You bought Microsoft Office, can you just duplicate it
and sell it to your coworkers? I'm sure your software "duplicator" can produce
exact copies. IANAL either, but I'm pretty sure your argument wouldn't stand
up in court if you tried to sell your exact copies of your authorized copy of
Microsoft Office.

~~~
dchest
You're confusing copyright law with patent law.

------
rtpg
> Monsanto says that if it allowed Bowman to keep replanting his seeds it
> would undermine its business model, endangering the expensive research that
> it uses to produce advanced agricultural products.

I didn't realize that having a bad business model gave you a valid case.

~~~
latch
Devil's advocate: How do you suggest companies with large R&D budgets doing
work that can potentially benefit humanity recoupe its costs. The question
applies to GMOs where the product can often reproduce as well as medical
companies where generics are involved.

~~~
rwallace
How do you suggest we finance lighthouses without arresting people and putting
them in prison for the crime of walking down a road that happens to be in line
of sight of a lighthouse while not wearing a company-approved blindfold?

As a libertarian I think we should seek a smaller role for government in
people's lives. But I also think if something is in fact a function of
government, we would be better off to admit it and formally finance it as
such, than bring it in the back door by dishonest means.

------
nlh
I've been thinking about this a lot since I first read about it yesterday.
Here's what I think is _fair_ (throwing out doctrine, etc.).
IA(definitely)NAL.

Monsanto has every right to get a patent on the 1G seeds. They have every
right to sell those seeds -- they put money and effort into designing a
(theoretically) improved product and should be rewarded for their investment.

Once they sell the 1G seeds, however, that's it. If the resulting plants
produce equal-quality 2G seeds, then so be it. Once the farmer has purchased
the 1G seeds (presumably from Monsanto), that's the end of the road for
Monsanto. They've produced a product, sold it, and made their money.

What's happening here is that Monsanto is using the courts to compensate for a
bad business model and a flaw in their design. If they want to continue to get
farmers to purchase seeds from them year after year, then what they _should_
have done is engineered the seeds to "expire" after a generation: The results
plants should produce 2G seeds that are in some way inferior to the 1G seeds.

That way, farmers have a natural incentive to keep purchasing 1G seeds year
after year. No lawsuits or restrictive license agreements needed. If farmers
want the best, they buy from Monsanto. If they are ok with the inferior 2G
seeds, then they can harvest their own and keep planting.

If it's not possible for Monsanto to engineer the seeds as such, well, too
bad. The buck stops there. They need to charge more for the 1G seeds then. But
farmers won't pay if the cost is too high? Well, again, too bad. Their job is
to convince farmers that buying 1G seeds at 2-3x the price is worth it because
of the improved product. If not, well, back to the drawing board.

This comes down to Monsanto trying to use a license agreement and the courts
to compensate for a flaw in their product design, and that isn't right.

~~~
sshumaker
They do own technology to achieve this:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techn...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology#section_3)

It basically prevents G2 seeds altogether, but they've pledged not to use it
because of public outcry, instead relying on these contracts.

If you seriously think through the consequences of usage of this kind of tech,
it's pretty dire. Due to natural cross-pollination, we could be setting
ourselves up for a world where everyone must buy all of their seeds from
Monsanto and their ilk, who would have a monopoly on the world's food supply.
That's bad news indeed.

~~~
crusso
Why? Patents expire. If G2 seeds did not exist then there would be a greater
market for alternatives.

Monsanto wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to benefit from G1
seeds through GX seeds while contaminating the supply of available non-
Monsanto seeds.

In cases of cross-pollination, that's Monsanto's fault. They should be
required to clean up their own mess. I don't see how they'd have grounds to
control seeds that were cross-pollinated through their negligence.

Monsanto is worried about more than just some outcry if they put in
termination genes. They could be opening themselves up to a great deal of
pain.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Patents expire._

Unfortunately, so do monocultures.

------
anuy
[http://www.globalresearch.ca/killer-seeds-the-devastating-
im...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/killer-seeds-the-devastating-impacts-of-
monsanto-s-genetically-modified-seeds-in-india/28629)

Killer Seeds

The irony is GM seeds have not been effective in India and the consequences
are not as rosy as what Monsanto had promised to deliver. Scathing reports of
mass suicides of Indian farmers broke out as recently as three years ago when
scores of farmers took their own lives in order to escape the burden of high
prices and failure of Monsanto’s GM seeds.

Monsanto offered its GM seeds to the farmers of India with hopes of reaping
plentiful crops. Plain and mostly uneducated farmers thought Monsanto had come
to provide a “magic” formula that would transform their lives. They had no
idea what was coming.

Monsanto’s seeds in India did not produce what the company had promised and
farmers hoped. The expensive seeds piled up debts and destroyed farming
fields. In many instances, the crops simply failed to materialize. The farmers
were not aware that the GM seeds required more water than the traditional
seeds. And lack of rain in many parts of India exacerbated the crop failure.

------
meric
If Monsanto patent a method of genetically modifying my child's genes (so that
he is more resistant to cancer, for example), does that mean my child cannot
have children without paying a license fee to Monsanto, otherwise he/she is
liable for patent infringement?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
If Monsato patents a virus, and it spreads out of control, can those affected,
whose bodies produce more of the virus, be sued for patent infringement?

~~~
veemjeem
Yes, but they didn't. Your straw-man argument is pretty inaccurate here. The
lawsuit isn't about the accidental cross pollination of genes. It's probably
closer to duplicating copyright works by someone who bought one copy.

------
El_Mariachi
You don't patent things, you patent methods. Monsanto has patented a method of
inserting and manipulating certain gene sequences in soybeans. Growing
offspring of existing modified beans is not the same as performing the
modification.

If they wanted their seeds to have an expiration date they should have
engineered that in there too. Soybean replicants.

~~~
lutusp
> You don't patent things, you patent methods.

That may be true now. There was a time, not so long ago, that a patent was
denied to any idea that had not been reduced to practice, in a working
physical embodiment:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_to_practice>

Quote: "In United States patent law, the reduction to practice is a concept
meaning the embodiment of the concept of an invention. The date of this
embodiment is critical to the determination of priority between inventors in
an interference proceeding."

(I hasten to add that the above rule about priority no longer applies. Because
of recent changes, the U.S. is changing to a first-to-file system.)

Quote: "A 'working model' is usually a strong evidence to demonstrate actual
reduction to practice. Unlike patent models of the 18th and 19th century, a
working model is no longer a requirement of the U.S. patent law."

All this has been swept away by changes in the law, and we have the present
patent system in which the patent office rubber-stamps virtually anything, and
claimants work things out in court.

------
dragonbonheur
Q: What does it take to make a multi-million company and its over-qualified
employees forget that the purpose of life is to SPREAD?

A: GREED.

------
Qantourisc
What happens when a bag falls of the transport, and grows a patch ? Next the
seeds drop and make a bigger patch. Who needs to pay the patent fees mother
nature ?

Another scenario: cross-breeding with other crops due to bees. Your strain
could get copied to the field next door: NEW problem.

And for all the evil corporations out there: make as many seeds as you can.
Next put them in an airplain and spread them EVERYWHERE you can. Wait 3 yeas
for the strain to spread and sew EVERYONE.

In essence you a selling a self-replicating machine not under your control ...
And they don't see an issue here ?

A better way to "reward" these companies (if we want genetic mutated strains)
let them prove the worth they create and pay it off by the government, since
they serve the entire community. (And hope there is no corruption or abuse on
the system.)

------
falcolas
To me, the following is the worst part of this entire story:

"... it is ironically Bowman’s own lack of cash that has seen the case end up
at the supreme court."

Why does it take someone being bankrupt and having "nothing to loose" to get a
case like this brought forward? It seems like a perversion of the concept of
the court systems.

~~~
lilsunnybee
Seems like the best part to me. Usually unless you're well-off or wealthy,
justice is hard to come by. In this case its the argument that matters, not
the weight of wealth behind it.

------
lifeisstillgood
To me this raises interesting questions of wider infrastructure regulation.
The supply of gas to homes is heavily regulated in every country - but
regulations over who owns a seed? No one ever thought such a thing possible.

The same goes for Internet search - if Google goes broke or looses its backups
or charges 1 pound a month subscription what happens?

Do we need a law of innovation-to-infrastructure? Once a company achieves some
innovation that is sooooo part of the world that it seems like infrastructure,
do we prevent it from monetizing the same in some counter productive manner?
Do we produce a oversight committee

I squirm inwardly at half those words - but then again my gas supply works, at
a affordable rate.

~~~
jessaustin
Does the gas company do a great deal of R&D? Sure there's R&D involved in
extraction and refining, but you seem to be talking about distribution. I
think you may be talking about the (incorrect) idea that large infrastructure
assets must be protected by state-enforced monopoly. Large infrastructure
assets do not need this protection, and I blame Ma Bell for popularizing the
idea (at least in the USA) that they do.

There's actually a huge natural gas rollout taking place in my community right
now: <http://www.summitnaturalgas.com/view/92> This is a large investment,
which involves laying hundreds of miles of pipe and boring under the Lake of
the Ozarks in three different places (in one location parallel to a privately-
funded highway bridge). I understand that investors expect to be paid back
over decades. Yet, no one appointed Summit to do this work, any more than
anyone appointed Google or Monsanto to do what they do. Anyone in the world
with an internet connection and a server farm is free to compete with Google.
On day one when they turn the tap on their pipeline, Summit will be competing
with numerous propane suppliers, the local incumbent electric companies, and
even the long-term possibility (however remote) of another group building
another natural gas pipeline. If Summit and Google don't need state
protection, why would Monsanto?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am not saying state _protection_ \- more like state-encouraged-socially-
beneficial-behaviour

Tomorrow will change so fast that relying on 75 year old farmers to take on
esoteric legal points to enforce social benefit is a little unreliable

~~~
jessaustin
Sure I agree that gas companies shouldn't be allowed to endanger the public in
foreseeable and avoidable ways, but I sort of feel that way about everybody.
If the gas company blows up your house then the courts should see that you are
compensated. It seems a major step from that to "oversight committees". Maybe
a committee will notice problems that most individuals won't, but there are
many more individuals than there could ever be committees. We're much more
likely to hear about the dastardly deeds of multinational corporations from
the people they've screwed than from a government committee.

------
pingou
I hate Monsanto as much as everyone else but I agree with them in this case.
If farmers are permitted to replant seeds then how are companies making the
seeds supposed to make money ?

I believe GM are a chance to humanity, with the potential to feed more and
more people.

But why develop it and spend millions on R&D if everybody can copy your
product for free ?

And as far as I know, these seeds allow farmers to use massive doses of
roundup, if this guy used some roundup on his crops it's fair to say he
perfectly knows these were gm seeds and that he wasn't allowed to use it for
free.

If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it and do like farmers always did,
with standard seeds.

~~~
dexen
_> If farmers are permitted to replant seeds then how are companies making the
seeds supposed to make money ?_

I'm not a biologist, but I assume it is possible to make 1G grains edible but
infertile -- incapable of sprouting a new plant and/or growing 2G grains. That
would render 1G grains useless for sewing, and still usable for anything else.
Much like cross of horse and donkey is a viable, but infertile mule.

The way I imagine it, Monsanto have to grow two strains of grain, each giving
viable grains when pollinated within the strain, but giving only infertile 1G
seeds when cross-pollinated.

Of course that would generate extra costs for Monsanto: additional research,
maintaining two separate strains and cross-pollinating them.

~~~
dchest
From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_Technology>

_Because some stakeholders expressed concerns that this technology might lead
to dependence for small farmers, Monsanto Company, an agricultural products
company and the world's biggest seed supplier, pledged not to commercialize
the technology in 1999.[2] Customers who buy patented transgenic seeds from
Monsanto must sign a contract not to save or sell the seeds from their
harvest,[3] which preempts the need for a "terminator gene"._

~~~
jessaustin
The concern was that the "terminator" gene would force poor farmers to buy
seeds every year, and they alleviated that concern by instead forcing poor
farmers to buy seeds every year by contract?

Let me guess, the "stakeholders" we have in mind here are trial lawyers?
Sometimes the technological solution really is better than the "social"
solution. It leads me to wonder just how effective this terminator thing
really is.

~~~
xyzzy123
Well, it's like the ultimate genetic defect. So basically relying on the
technological solution alone isn't going to last, because of all the billions
of seeds... the ones which can reproduce will be the ones which do.

~~~
jessaustin
Hahaha, that's a handy redefinition of "genetic defect", but I doubt Steven
Jay Gould would agree...

Actually the vast majority of soybeans are processed into useful products like
shoyu, livestock feed, plastics, etc. If the viable soybean were a needle in a
haystack, no farmer would bother looking for it.

~~~
xyzzy123
Disclosure of bias: I'm ideologically against the idea of messing with
fundamental aspects of life (and the basis of agriculture) for the purposes of
copy protection. That said, I very much agree with you. I'd like to explain
though and at least elaborate on my biases :)

What you might see would be e.g. the spread of the copyrighted genes without
the terminator genes rather than some farmer grovelling through a pile of
seeds trying to find something viable. Or descendants of copyrighted plants
growing where they shouldn't be - because the ones that could, did. It seems
to me that even if you have the terminator genes, as a "corporate innovator",
you still need IP protection. A reasonable and conservative person should
assume things fuck up at scale and especially with viral technologies like,
say, life.

On the other hand, if terminator genes work well, they start looking like a
bad idea. For a start they're strategically bad for any nation which might
ever be at war or subject to terrorism, due to the fragility of centralised
seed production and distribution.

Also, the idea that the terminator genes would spread to other plants (e.g.
<http://discovermagazine.com/2003/aug/featgenes> which I never was too worried
about) starts to look more like a real thing.

~~~
jessaustin
I appreciate that bias and appreciate your admission, but I don't share it. I
view life as a hungry equilibrium. It has existed on this planet for a long
time, and has endured much worse shocks than Monsanto can produce. In the long
run biologists will simply see the contributions of intelligent life as
another source of genetic variability. That isn't to say that humans always
have good ideas about genetic changes: consider the dachshund. Only planetary-
scale events have the potential to really screw things up for life per se.

I think we can agree that as harmful non-inherited transmissible genetic
variation goes, the terminator gene (if it actually works; do we really know
why Monsanto didn't buy Delta & Pine?) is probably the least worrisome. A gene
that acts against reproductive fitness is not one that will ever be common in
nature. As for other variations, patented or not, I expect most will be out-
competed outside carefully controlled environments. Few domestic chickens live
long in a predator-rich environment. Roundup tolerance itself is unlikely to
enhance fitness in the absence of someone willing to pay Monsanto thousands of
dollars every year. Those few human-created variations that can establish
themselves in wild populations, if we ever discover such, I'm just going to
call evolution. The spectre of the super-weed seems silly to me: the essence
of a weed is that, in the absence of human intervention, it crowds out plants
that humans like. Roundup is only agriculturally valuable for cultivation of
varieties that tolerate Roundup; if weeds gained that tolerance it wouldn't be
a net loss for humanity.

------
kostko
Oh god. Can we just stop following the law in something so obvious? What's
fair and normal for 10000000 of years, has recently been changed by some
writings on a paper. And don't give me the 'you let this slip but where do you
draw the line next time'. Humanity has become so obsessed with these rules,
guidelines, standards, that we've imprisoned ourselves for the sake of a few
bucks.

In the end, there will be just one factory with a big tomato logo on it, from
which all the worlds tomatoes will come.

------
coditor
The argument not being made here is this: why should you be able to patent DNA
sequences? Sure Monsanto is patenting the method to create the sequences, but
enforcing the end result of the method (seeds) doesn't make any sense as a
patent. It's like patenting a machine that makes widgets, then suing people
who don't use the widgets the way you'd like them to.

------
mattmcknight
Why this link from "rawstory" instead of the guardian?
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/feb/09/soybean-farmer-
mon...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/feb/09/soybean-farmer-monsanto-
supreme-court)

------
rfugger
The Supreme Court of Canada heard a similar case 9 years ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmei...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser)

(Spoiler alert: Monsanto won.)

------
tarr11
This guy needs a kickstarter campaign. He can send us some 2G soybeans from
his farm if he wins the case and we can all plant them in our gardens.

------
coin
Unrelated, but their mobile version of the page is utterly unusable on my iPad
1. Wished they just served up the non-mobile version.

------
shill
My question is, will Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself from a case
involving his former employer?

------
newsmaster
Funny I just watched a documentary a few days ago about Monsanto and how some
GM crops strip the lining and the gut causing a myriad of health problems.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnlTYFKBg18> Not sure how much of it is fact
though.

