No Patents on Seeds

by nns1212 • 13 years ago

107 20 13 years ago

tehwalrus4• 13 years ago

I am increasingly of the opinion that patents simply aren't worth the trouble they cause.

I get that you need them for the lone inventor in their shed in the garden, but they never seem to be the ones who own all the patents.

phryk4• 13 years ago

Indeed. It's pretty obvious that most patents are owned by corporations who paid someone to do the work and not by the inventors themselves. My personal assessment is that in contemporary times, patents only slow down progress and fill the pockets of already-rich people.

That said, I am wary of anything environmentalist since those people often seem to not have done even the most minute amount of research on their topics and then continue to spread misinformation or plain lies (see the anti-GMO people for instance).

The mentioned site for example, seems to imply that plant/animal patents will diminish biodiversity ("The organisations behind No Patents On Seeds are especially concerned about […] biodiversity.").

I have no clue how granting patents on plants and animals is supposed to diminish biodiversity. Won't new plants and animals increase biodiversity? I mean yes, without the patents you could crossbreed and remix GM and other plants more freely which would boost the increase even further, but even a small increase is still pretty much the opposite of a decrease and dismantles the argument.

And before someone gets into cross-pollination and other ways of patented species overtaking 'natural' species habitats: For that to happen you need the GM species to be vastly better at reproducing. The chances of this happening without it being a goal of the development (which it usually isn't, since they want you to buy shit again and again…) are pretty small. As far as I know most GM organisms are even made sterile.

And while the risk of GM organisms "taking over the world" is relatively slim, naturally occuring species do this kind of stuff right this moment. The so-called 'Killer bees', some species of fish and crustaceans, red fire ants. et cetera, et cetera.

Many people have this sense of nature being balanced and that if we don't touch it, it'll all be alright ("Man made everything bad!", the environmentalist version of original sin). This is complete and utter bullshit, just doesn't work that way. Ecosystems are not static, they are extremely dynamic and never balanced.

tehwalrus4• 13 years ago

Won't new plants and animals increase biodiversity?

The issue here isn't that - new plants and animals may be good or bad, but that's an environmental argument. My concern is allowing people to patent biochemistry/DNA sequences, which is clearly bad.

EU law doesn't allow software patents, perhaps it's time to define DNA as a computer program, thus making it illegal to patent it.

srisa• 13 years ago

I have no clue how granting patents on plants and animals is supposed to diminish biodiversity. Won't new plants and animals increase biodiversity? I mean yes, without the patents you could crossbreed and remix GM and other plants more freely which would boost the increase even further, but even a small increase is still pretty much the opposite of a decrease and dismantles the argument.

With the proliferation of patents and the marketing blitz by these companies, we'll have only a handful of varieties that are sterile. There will be no new varieties coming out of natural cross pollination because we are left with sterile patented varieties.

Ecosystems are not static, they are extremely dynamic and never balanced.

Exactly. The viruses, bacteria and pests are evolving naturally; they are increasing their resistance to the existing pesticides. With the sterile varieties, there is no evolution, no adaptation to the changing environmental conditions and the changing pests.

belorn2• 13 years ago

I fully agree. While I can see that the original intention with patents are good, the current implementation is beyond salvaging.

Mostly this comes from the patent system being made from 19th century administrative standards. Its basically the oldest type of administrative process that hasn't been fundamentally updated in the last 200 years, and it shows.

*See more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5563289

madaxe• 13 years ago

Patents on seeds are particularly worrying as a result of The Patent Box (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ct/forms-rates/claims/patent-box.htm) in the UK. Basically means income from patented "inventions" is tax free, which means that Monsanto and chums will only get richer, and the market less competitive. Tweak a gene, repatent, ad infinitum.

Never mind that this is a complete perversion of the purpose of the patent system (innovation and the common good).

tehwalrus4• 13 years ago

The sad thing is that will have been designed to incentivise innovation/R&D, when in fact it incentivises registering more patents. :/

kdeberk• 13 years ago

It's quite obvious that the maintainers are often being economical with the truth, for example, from their article on Monsanto (actually Seminis) receiving a patent of a specific subsort of brocolli: (http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/information/news/monsa...)

"Today the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich granted a patent on conventional breeding."

Really? The process of conventional breeding is patented? I thought it was about brocolli?

"It additionally covers a “plurality of broccoli plants .. . grown in a field of broccoli.”"

Quote mining. The patent makes it clear that this sentence is about the brocolli subspecies that was patented, but the authors of the article rip this sentence out of context to make it appear that all of brocolli now belongs to Monsanto.

Also, note that in their article only 5 sentences, about half of the first paragraph, are relevant to the patent while the remainder of the article (4.5 paragraphs) are about on how terrible these patents are. They barely discuss what the patent is really about and the article only seems to be a kneejerk based on a quick scan of the patent. Why should I agree with the author and sign the petition if he needs to be intellectually dishonest?

I'm not sure what my position on patents on plants are. Almost all plants that we currently cultivate could never have existed without artificial selection (unintentional or otherwise). In this specific case, Seminis had to perform focused work so that these plants could exist. It's not as if these plants just fell out of the sky.

throwawaykf02• 13 years ago

economical with the truth

That could be said about pretty much any article about patents that gets posted to HN. Or heck, most of tech media. It's unfortunate that so-called geeks and hackers swallow it without the least bit of critical thought. Your post is a refreshing change.

Not saying the patent system is perfect, just that it's broken in completely different ways than what the tech media (cough submarine cough) likes to portray.

belorn2• 13 years ago

A much needed work, and I wish them all the luck in abolishing patents and any other kind of state enforced monopolies around plants, genetic material and other similar areas.

With some success in the EU, current food industries might feel inclined to stop trying exploiting state power for their businesses model, and just focus on creating superior products that are useful for the consumer. There will never be a lack of potential buyers for superior methods of farming, as the cost of biofuel are directly linked to the easy of farming. The army would love to throw money at more effective corn/soy/sugarcane production, if it would lower their cost in using biofuel. Animal fat is also used, so basically anything a farm produce could improve the biofuel industry.

No Patents on Seeds

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