Galt's Gulch

Monsanto Tries Patenting Natural Tomatoes

Posted by freedomforall 10 years, 4 months ago to Business
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Monsanto’s clever lawyers created wording in their patent application to give the impression that the seed was genetically engineered to produce this quality. They made the tomato look their “invention.” This is essentially biopiracy.

The revoking of this patent is important because it tells Monsanto and other biotech companies that the world will not stand down to its abuse of patent laws. It will also allow plant breeders and home gardeners access to a larger variety of naturally resistant plants.
SOURCE URL: http://www.infowars.com/new-level-monsanto-tries-patenting-natural-tomatoes/

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  • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 4 months ago
    What happens if someone develops a plant strain that counteracts glyphosate resistance in GMO plants... and then allows it to propagate naturally... either by planting said seedstock next to certain fields seeded with a certain company's finest... or dispersed in water, fed into the local farm canal...

    Scary enough, I can see some PETA-esque enviroterror whackjob mad chemist doing something like that... Only the non-GMO farmers will survive, the others who sold out to the Big M and Co... well... yeah.
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    • Posted by dbhalling 10 years, 4 months ago
      What do you mean propagates naturally? If you mean free from a patent, then they cannot change the terms of their license.
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      • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 4 months ago
        I'm talking about a whack-job ecoterrorist infesting GMO based plants via seed plant reproduction and pollen drift... bee cross-pollenization, introducing an antigen for the GMO seeds via irrigation... ya know, farming. I don't think terrorist-types worry too much about patent license infringement...
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        • Posted by dbhalling 10 years, 4 months ago
          Interesting scenario. I think that while these sort of ideas make interesting stories for a book or movie, in real life it would be much more difficult to have these strains spread.
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  • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
    The European patent office has weakened substantially over the last decade. Looking at this patent will take significant time. The liklihood of clever attorneys is unlikely. Remember, patent attorneys are first engineers with years of engineering training, then they go to law school. They are not ambulance chasers. I find this post insulting and Alex Jones and co do not have a clue about inventions or what is patentable.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 4 months ago
      But they do seem to be able to report on things that have occurred. I could understand a criticism of making the story up (which you haven't done), but to criticize the reporter for not being a patent attorney while reporting on a factual event just takes the cake.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 10 years, 4 months ago
    Here is comment I put on infowars:

    It would be nice if the author of this article understood patents. The US version of the patent describes the invention as:

    The present invention relates to a method for detecting a quantitative trait locus (QTL) associated with resistance to Botrytis cinerea in tomato, including the steps of crossing a Botrytis-resistant donor tomato plant with a non-resistant, or Botrytis-susceptible, recipient tomato plant, contacting one or more offspring plants with an infective amount of Botrytis, quantitatively determining the disease incidence and/or the rate of lesion growth in the one or more offspring plants, establishing a genetic linkage map that links the observed disease incidence and/or rate of lesion growth to the presence of chromosomal markers of the donor tomato plant in the one or more offspring plants, and assigning to a QTL the contiguous markers on the map that are linked to a reduced disease incidence and/or a reduced lesion growth rate.

    This does not occur naturally, this is not a natural tomato. Please check your facts are remove this article from your otherwise fine site.
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    • Posted by richrobinson 10 years, 4 months ago
      The European patent was revoked because it was obtained fraudulently. Isn't that the right thing to do?
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      • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
        there are numerous details to analyze. It's difficult to get into that with the information available to us. There is a US case. Clearly, this is an invention. The point of the article is to challenge invention. No one starts from basic premises in order to build a case. This article's author is clueless regarding the process of invention and validity of invention itself. It's saying I will ignore A is A, I will ignore how do I know what I know and skip directly to an ethical discussion. Vague amorphous feelings of "monopoly" have no basis in reality with regards to invention. Now Monsanto is no choir boy. Let's have THAT discussion. They are the epitome of crony. Vilify them for that. As far as the EPO goes? Stand on your right foot, make counter-clockwise circles with your left hand on your head and bleet at a quarter moon on the 3rd month, after you pay fees which are unclear and continuous. think of the EPO as the UN. you'll have a close approximation
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    • Posted by freedomforall 10 years, 4 months ago
      From that description it appears that except for the accounting of the genetic markers the process it is what could occur in nature. In order to have a legitimate patent of value wouldn't they have to disprove genetically that naturally resistant tomato plants are different from what those created by Monsanto (and let the market decide if their product is valuable in comparison)? This appears to me to be a patent in search of a future application, and there are multitudes of those that fail to find one and are wasted research. Imo, the Monsanto engineers were covering their asses for wasting time and capital on as yet valueless R&D. Under normal circumstances (i.e., honest use of the patent system by inventors) that would not be a problem. Monsanto has shown in past actions that they will use their lawyers to defend their patent "rights" in ways that were not anticipated by patent law, and expand such "rights" into areas that encompass natural occurrance of resistant plants similar to their "products". I admire the resistance to Monsanto's misuse of patent law. It appears that Monsanto's past has caused their enemies to use Monsanto's methods against them.
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