Patents on food crops, even genetically engineered ones, are evil. ALL our staple food crops and most non staples are genetically engineered by millennia of cultivation and selective breeding; CRISPR is just a fancy mechanism for what we’ve always done to food.
Regulations that prevent farmers from selling food that is safe, are evil. It doesn’t matter how well intentioned the regulation is.
Any government functionary that tries to prevent a farmer from selling safe food, is doing evil. Any lawyer that tries to prevent a farmer from selling food, is doing evil. Any court that enjoins a farmer from selling safe food, is doing evil. If the farmer is found to have violated some IP claim, then the proper remedy is monetary damages after the fact, not enjoined before the fact.
Despite what everyone is assuming, this case doesn't depend on patents. The farmer entered into an agreement with another company and they're locked in a legal battle about that agreement.
> Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jon Skiles in May ruled that Giumarra’s breach of contract claim can go forward, saying that the agreement between Giumarra and Mora is valid whether there is a patent for the fruit or not.
> “The sublicense agreement does not expressly state that its validity is dependent on the existence or issuance of a patent for the fruit,” he wrote.
What I don’t understand is, _how_ it doesn’t depend on a patent right. How do you license something that doesn’t depend on a licensable right?
If it isn’t a patent right, exactly _what_ is he purchasing a license to? If it’s purely an agreement of exclusivity to Giumarra, it can’t be called a “sub license” and the consequence is just a breach of contract (which is what it sounds like). But in that case I’m sure there are mutual termination agreements in the exclusivity contract.
Also, if it’s _not_ a patent, what exactly does the company bring to the table? For what consideration does the farmer give them an exclusive access to his trees?
it could be seeds, rootstalk, cash, loans a future purchase guarantee. There is basically an endless list of reasons the contract could have been initially attractive for the farmer.
As you say, it mostly comes down to what the parties agreed to about exiting the contract.
Correct, many people get worked up over the idea of the patents that could be in play here; plenty of good reason when that is a consideration. The court has already decided that the existence of a patent or licensing agreement is not relevant; It’s a contract dispute.
I’d still make the same argument- the remedy should be monetary damages, not enjoinder. Produce had a short shelf life; enjoinder has the same effect on the farmer as a loss in court, only before the trial. The other party to the contract can be made whole later, if victorious, via monetary damages.
Well, as an Iowa farm boy (and farm land owner) I have a more nuanced view. There have been hybrid maizes for many decades. It is possible to create unstable hybrids of normal field corns, which serves as a form of intellectual property protection for seed companies. As a farmer, you certainly can go out and plant heirloom varieties that can self-reproduce if you so choose. At which point, the choice of buying hybrid seed versus planting an heirloom variety is a simple business decision. Now with soy beans, on the other hand, it is not possible to create an unstable hybrid. Even hybrid soy beans can be saved and planted. Which is the direct root of the insanity around Monsanto's Roundup-Ready hybrid seed licensing scheme, and all the notorious law suits around that. We would be better off if Monsanto could sell an unstable soy hybrid. That would eliminate all the craziness that the licensing system creates.
Them doing it for a certain amount of time does not make it any less egregious. I'm not sure if you're just stating fact or wanting to use it as a rebuttal. I hope the former.
It is preferable if genetically engineered crops cannot reproduce. The impact of their wild propagation should be studied first, not unleashed upon the local ecosystem.
In general, crop plants don't propagate well in the wild. The whole point of breeding a crop plant is to remove their chemical defenses (to make them edible) and to make them produce lots of edible parts. This is usually the direct opposite of what plants need to survive in the wild.
If we understand "in the wild" to mean outside of farmers' fields, then rapeseed pollen flying from one rapeseed field to another nearby rapeseed field is not "in the wild".
"The impact of their wild propagation should be studied first, not unleashed upon the local ecosystem."
So by "wild propagation" you meant farm-to-farm propagation? And by "local ecosystem" you meant "farmers' fields"? And you accuse others of redefining words.
isn't this just a by-product of seed hybridization which has enabled pretty much all of modern agriculture? A lot of testing goes into finding the two strains that combine together to create high-yield seeds, but the next generations of those seeds won't produce well.
Almost true. For many plants, a hybrid is naturally unstable, and can often be stabilized with one extra cross. (But isn't, as it serves as intellectual property protection for the seed company.) But some plants, soy beans being a biggest cash-crop example, can not be bred to be unstable. (See my comment above about Monsanto Roundup-Ready beans.)
So you want to destroy all the people who create hybrid plants? Isn't that a bit cruel?
Edit: also, Monsanto has never actually used their non-replicating seeds. This is a common trope in the greenie hippie community that "Monsanto wants to own your food forever".
True, he's not suggesting that they be sent prematurely, just that they should endure eternal torture afterwards. That seems harsh for growing a seedless grape.
Let's try this: "greenie hippie who want to starve the humanity deserve a special place in hell".
Hmm? Not bad, I think?
What? You're saying that greenie hippies think that they're actually saving the humanity by forcing it to get close to the Great Spirit, Wisdom of The Anciens or some such nonsense?
Well, Monsanto also had good reasons for developing self-terminating seeds. They are more contained, have almost zero risk of accidentally spreading resistance to other species, and they still can be easily recreated by anyone once the patent expires.
In general, invention of new things is something humanity's been tackling for quite awhile. Why would this apply specifically to food versus, well, everything?
There are inanimate objects that are manually made out of raw materials by humans. It can make sense to grant the inventor of such a thing a time limited monopoly on its production by banning anyone else from manufacturing it for sale and distribution.
Living beings are not inanimate objects that are manually made out of raw materials. They are not human-made. They reproduce and humans only create the environment for this to happen. You cannot invent a living being. You can invent a modification in the genome and thereby create a new breed, but that should not grant you the right to have a monopoly on the reproduction of those living beings.
Patents function only to limit the actions of what living beings can and cannot do.
Plus, it's seems false to paint this orchard as just an environment humans created where they reproduced. It's a place where the farmer very specifically reproduced them, not just the conditions.
> Patents function only to limit the actions of what living beings can and cannot do.
Like all other laws. I don't see how this is relevant.
> It's a place where the farmer very specifically reproduced them, not just the conditions.
Sorry to be so blunt, but the farmer is neither fucking peaches nor giving birth to them. Living beings self reproduce. Humans sometimes put a lot of work into creating the perfect conditions for that to happen, but that is irrelevant to the point. When I smash rocks together to create a tool I and only I created that. When I plant seeds for them to grow into fruits which contain many more seeds I did not create the new seeds on my own. That does not make my work any less valuable but it does change the nature of the action. The first scenario should be allowed to be restricted to the inventor for a limited time. The second scenario should not be restricted. The act of reproduction of life should never be seen as anyone's property.
I can go for a month, probably longer, without, say, the internet. I could also go a month without food, maybe, but there are people who can't. Food is different because it is essential to life.
The food that is patented isn't essential to life, though. Essentially all of humanity has lived all of it's lifetimes without this modern varietal of nectarines just fine.
There are certainly tons of cases where modern developments might be actually essentially to life or extend life like with medication, medical devices, temperature control, moves to modern electric technologies versus combustion to reduce pollution, etc. How do we incentivize new medication development, something way more lifesaving than nectarine varietals, without some period of exclusivity? At least there, twenty years from now, the solutions will be more accessible versus never developed.
This relates in no way to the availability of food, which in the US at least is high enough that starvation is the preserve of the terminally ill, anorexic/bulimic, addicted and indigent, rather than people who can't find calories to eat. This is almost entirely an economic issue that would be a lot easier to discuss without the incessant and repetitive emotional comments.
Breeding new crop varieties is relatively scientific and sophisticated work, like any other advances in technology and products. If you couldn't parent your work, there wouldn't be much incentive to do the work. America has had plant patents since 1930, there is nothing new about this.
Just a general thought on your comment style. Summarily declaring something "evil" means that you're not really interested in hearing any other comments on the topic, and that additional data or analysis of the issue will have no effect on your opinion.
Which, in and of itself, may be fine for you, but I find it to be the absolute least useful comments on HN.
What's the purpose of communication? Is it to convince, or to preach to the choir/your side? If it's the former, I doubt summarily labeling everything "evil" or "a human right" is going to change any minds. If it's the latter, what's even the point? Is it to make you feel good about yourself or make yourself look good in front of your activist friends?
> Summarily declaring something "evil" means that you're not really interested in hearing any other comments on the topic, and that additional data or analysis of the issue will have no effect on your opinion.
I'd say it is in the end an ethics issue. Sure, the tone may be offputting, but... I think there is value in having people around who actually hold beliefs and aren't as quickly willing to put their beliefs aside. Society as a whole benefits from a corrective to ultra-progressives - even if what the progressives want is a good thing (which, to be clear, it almost always is!), move too fast and you end up losing the masses along the way.
>I think there is value in having people around who actually hold beliefs and aren't as quickly willing to put their beliefs aside.
I don't know about you, but people who hyperbolically label stuff "evil" without providing justification seems like exactly the type of person who would flip-flop depending on whether it's politically expedient for them or not (eg. preaching fiscal responsibility when the opposition is in power, but then being fiscally profligate when they're in power).
> So you want to go back hundreds of years and force people to live in hunger with frequent famines?
Sadly, there are theories that this is precisely something that is desired as population control of groups that are "less desirable". It's usually the same groups that say AIDS was designed for the same purpose.
Which law suits would those be? It seems to me that the reality is that GMO seeds are really useful and all the lawsuits Ive seen are farmers wanting to use them without paying royalties.
Sure. Poor business decisions are entirely tax deductable as long as your intention is to eventually turn a profit. It is extremely common for business to do poorly or fail.
Most people dont waste money for fun, and the deductions are basically never worth the cost. (why would someone spend 100k on a business to save 25k on taxes? they would still net $-75k)
Also, if you continually loose money over many years, the IRS may question if it is a legitimate business or a hobby for personal gain.
regardless of how the contract is structured, no contract should allow or force a producer to throw products away. this is similar to a law in the EU that forbids producers or distributors of clothing to destroy products they don't want to sell.
once you plant a tree to grow fruit you should be allowed to keep harvesting that tree until its natural end. if there is an exclusive contract then the contract must not be allowed to be terminated before that end unless the grower is free to sell on the open market after termination.
anything else would allow patent owners to hold growers hostage
̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶.̶
ah, good catch. the question now is whether giumarra accepted the termination or not. i could not find that detail in the article. if they accepted it, then my argument holds (note that i am arguing how things should be, not what the actual current law on the matter is). if giumarra did not accept termination then the exclusive contract should still hold. (whether an exclusive contract is fair or not is another topic)
A state of "excess production" can only be determined long after production parameters have already been committed to. Yields, logistics costs, and market capacity aren't knowable ahead of time.
sure, but the market consequence to overproduction is that the price goes down. if you are not allowed to destroy products just to keep the price up then you will self correct in time.
sorry, i wasn't clear. i am specifically talking about excess that needs to be destroyed in order to keep prices up. meaning, artificially reducing the supply by creating waste.
true. but there is a difference between discarding food that has gone bad because you could not sell it, and discarding it without even trying to sell it because some exclusive contract prevents you from selling, or because you want to keep the price artificially high.
if you can't throw it away you need to be allowed to sell it.
the point here is sustainable production. the EU is implementing laws around that. if you produce more than what you can sell, then you need to reduce production and stop wasting resources.
It’s not the same thing. He is allowed to give them away and is doing so. If Mora is in breach of contract, maybe a better remedy for the distributor would be monetary damages but that is not obvious.
There’s an interesting question of if the distributor misrepresented the deal to Mora as he claims, but from the summary it appears nothing related to that is recorded that the court finds legally relevant.
seems like that would be double dipping and likely prohibited. They already get to write off the entire cost of prouction and carry losses forward 7 years IIRC.
If you spent decades doing selective breeding to obtain a more desirable product, you'd probably be a bit annoyed if others just stole the product from you and made money off of your hard work.
If the products are being bred from tax funded programs, then yes, anybody should have access to the new breeds, but if it's privately funded, then why should it be available for everyone? Without the protection, there isn't much incentive to invest time into developing better foods.
If someone grows a new tree from seeds after buying your fruit, their trees will take several years to bear fruit right? Works almost like a patent anyway.
(I don't know fruit growing well so maybe that's not true)
> you'd probably be a bit annoyed if others just stole the product
For sure, no one is arguing for stealing fruits here. However while you can steal physical fruits, you cannot steal genes.
> then why should it be available for everyone?
Why should it not be? You seem to view the right to breed a variety of some species that you created as some natural right and default. It is not. What you are arguing for here is the state going after people for creating the environment for plants to reproduce, which is a natural right.
The basic purpose of patents is to make it worthwhile to develop something new and valuable. They are unnatural - but useful. Working backwards, if we want people to spend time and money developing new breeds of plants, you arrive at these kinds of rules.
You can steal neither of those. You can copy them and in some specific cases copying bits or letters or some other human creative work might be unethical, in a lot more cases it can be illegal, but it is not theft.
But you can't just take a seed and make a new plant of same characteristics. Now I'm not sure if that's the case for nectarines but apples mutate massively between seed and plant that made it so basically all plantations are clones or clones + grafts.
You'd have better luck "stealing" it with some wire cutters and cutting some shoots off the trees
Plant patents incentivize the creation of disease resistant, tasty, and hardy varieties. If you remove the patents, you remove the incentive for private capital.
Capital to create new plants has to come from somewhere: public tax funding, grower-funded pools, or patent licensing. We do a mix of all three.
This isnt even a patent case. Its a contracts case. The article says these trees arent under patent, the farmer signed a contract saying he would only sell to one supplier and now wants to sell to others.
...and none does. You can grow and sell any peach you want; the tree has no sense of the childish tantrums of the state over its bounty.
This is a strong and obvious indications that the laws and statues as presented by the state are not in fact the actual underlying modes under which society operates.
Of course, but my point is: Monsanto is obviously incorrect. It's plain to see. Plants grow without permission. Bytes flow without permission. Ideas propagate without permission.
All this silliness to create a huge complicated regime to pretend that these things are "property" in the same sense as your underwear is just so obviously childish, incoherent, and inconsistent with reality.
It's just a really elaborate gown purported to be worn by the manifestly naked emperor.
>Of course, but my point is: Monsanto is obviously incorrect. It's plain to see. Plants grow without permission. Bytes flow without permission. Ideas propagate without permission.
So you're against any sort of intellectual property?
> So you're against any sort of intellectual property?
I observe that the universe in which I live doesn't seem to include the concept of intellectual property, and that there is quite a lot of misery and confusion that arises from efforts to shoehorn it in.
They made a new varietal. Nobody is saying he can't plant any of the standard heirloom Nectarines. The patent will expire in a while, and then anyone can do it.
Honestly, how are you proposing incentivizing developing new varietals if nobody can have patents on any breeds at all? This is how it has worked for half a century and mild gripes aside, the quality of the produce in stores is WAY WAY BETTER than it was before (seriously, what is the last time you ate a Red Delicious apple?)
Have like... some awareness of the large functioning important system you are mindlessly breaking with throwaway comments.
> The patent will expire in a while, and then anyone can do it.
I've read this a couple of times in these comments. However, this "in a while" is meaningless. A quick search suggests plant patents are 20 years from filing of patent. That's not as bad as I was thinking after hearing about the copyright nonsense of 95 years of publication or 120 years from creation depending. That'd be multiple generations of farmers rather than just one.
Well, yes. That's what is happening. The contest is called "market" and "the people" reward competitors by paying them.
Patents are used to enforce the rules so that competitors don't cheat.
Selective breeding requires sometimes _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work. This is not a good fit for academia and even worse fit for government programs.
That... was exactly the deal he had and didn't like.
> Under the agreements, Mora was to pay Giumarra a royalty of $2.50 per tree and a 4% production royalty based off the gross sales of the fruit the trees produced, as well as a sales commission.
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountain.
"And the smell of rot fills the country.“ (Chapter 35)
This passage had a profound impact on me when I first read it in high school. Only later did I discover that such atrocities still happen regularly today.
> In its court filings, Giumarra says all rights to the Monalise variety are owned by Star Fruits Diffusion, a French company that works with plant breeding programs, while Giumarra holds the right to sublicense the variety for testing, production and sale.
> French company
Enough said. This US admin will nuke that agreement instantly. If it was a fellow American company, let it pass.
Oh sure, but go up the chain, which is exactly what these guys are doing. As soon as the US prez hears that some French fops in powdered wigs are preventing USA farmers from selling their nectarines in California, he's going to go ballistic (on his phone, during his toilet break).
Patents on food crops, even genetically engineered ones, are evil. ALL our staple food crops and most non staples are genetically engineered by millennia of cultivation and selective breeding; CRISPR is just a fancy mechanism for what we’ve always done to food.
Regulations that prevent farmers from selling food that is safe, are evil. It doesn’t matter how well intentioned the regulation is.
Any government functionary that tries to prevent a farmer from selling safe food, is doing evil. Any lawyer that tries to prevent a farmer from selling food, is doing evil. Any court that enjoins a farmer from selling safe food, is doing evil. If the farmer is found to have violated some IP claim, then the proper remedy is monetary damages after the fact, not enjoined before the fact.
Despite what everyone is assuming, this case doesn't depend on patents. The farmer entered into an agreement with another company and they're locked in a legal battle about that agreement.
> Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jon Skiles in May ruled that Giumarra’s breach of contract claim can go forward, saying that the agreement between Giumarra and Mora is valid whether there is a patent for the fruit or not.
> “The sublicense agreement does not expressly state that its validity is dependent on the existence or issuance of a patent for the fruit,” he wrote.
What I don’t understand is, _how_ it doesn’t depend on a patent right. How do you license something that doesn’t depend on a licensable right?
If it isn’t a patent right, exactly _what_ is he purchasing a license to? If it’s purely an agreement of exclusivity to Giumarra, it can’t be called a “sub license” and the consequence is just a breach of contract (which is what it sounds like). But in that case I’m sure there are mutual termination agreements in the exclusivity contract.
Also, if it’s _not_ a patent, what exactly does the company bring to the table? For what consideration does the farmer give them an exclusive access to his trees?
it could be seeds, rootstalk, cash, loans a future purchase guarantee. There is basically an endless list of reasons the contract could have been initially attractive for the farmer.
As you say, it mostly comes down to what the parties agreed to about exiting the contract.
Correct, many people get worked up over the idea of the patents that could be in play here; plenty of good reason when that is a consideration. The court has already decided that the existence of a patent or licensing agreement is not relevant; It’s a contract dispute.
I’d still make the same argument- the remedy should be monetary damages, not enjoinder. Produce had a short shelf life; enjoinder has the same effect on the farmer as a loss in court, only before the trial. The other party to the contract can be made whole later, if victorious, via monetary damages.
This is how legal reasoning should work.
Oh, and there is a special place in hell reserved for anyone involved in designing food crops that can’t reproduce.
> anyone involved in designing food crops that can’t reproduce
This is a side effect of many clonal varieties of selective-bred crops. It's why they have to be grafted.
Does stop clueless numbskulls from cursing those who created these high-yield varities.
Well, as an Iowa farm boy (and farm land owner) I have a more nuanced view. There have been hybrid maizes for many decades. It is possible to create unstable hybrids of normal field corns, which serves as a form of intellectual property protection for seed companies. As a farmer, you certainly can go out and plant heirloom varieties that can self-reproduce if you so choose. At which point, the choice of buying hybrid seed versus planting an heirloom variety is a simple business decision. Now with soy beans, on the other hand, it is not possible to create an unstable hybrid. Even hybrid soy beans can be saved and planted. Which is the direct root of the insanity around Monsanto's Roundup-Ready hybrid seed licensing scheme, and all the notorious law suits around that. We would be better off if Monsanto could sell an unstable soy hybrid. That would eliminate all the craziness that the licensing system creates.
Monsanto ceased to exist 8 years ago. It was acquired and absorbed by a bigger company.
Do you want novel genes propagating throughout the food system by accident? Terminator genes prevent that problem.
Essentially all commercial apple trees are grafted and don't reproduce true to seed. Been this way for almost a century now.
It's been that way forever. No apple reproduces true to seed, period. 400 years ago, if you wanted another of your apple tree, you grafted it.
Them doing it for a certain amount of time does not make it any less egregious. I'm not sure if you're just stating fact or wanting to use it as a rebuttal. I hope the former.
The reality is that it’s not as clear cut like “X is bad/Y is good” as laypeople in this thread assume
It is preferable if genetically engineered crops cannot reproduce. The impact of their wild propagation should be studied first, not unleashed upon the local ecosystem.
> their wild propagation
In general, crop plants don't propagate well in the wild. The whole point of breeding a crop plant is to remove their chemical defenses (to make them edible) and to make them produce lots of edible parts. This is usually the direct opposite of what plants need to survive in the wild.
The wind carries pollen from the crops long distances, where it cross-pollinates with other crops, some of which are grown from seed.
This is a real thing that happens. There have been major court cases about it, like this one from Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...
If we understand "in the wild" to mean outside of farmers' fields, then rapeseed pollen flying from one rapeseed field to another nearby rapeseed field is not "in the wild".
If you redefine the words to win an argument you can win the argument.
By "wild propagation" I meant outside of the original controlled planting.
Propagating to another farm leaves the controlled area and now it's spreading in the wild.
This is what you wrote:
"The impact of their wild propagation should be studied first, not unleashed upon the local ecosystem."
So by "wild propagation" you meant farm-to-farm propagation? And by "local ecosystem" you meant "farmers' fields"? And you accuse others of redefining words.
isn't this just a by-product of seed hybridization which has enabled pretty much all of modern agriculture? A lot of testing goes into finding the two strains that combine together to create high-yield seeds, but the next generations of those seeds won't produce well.
Almost true. For many plants, a hybrid is naturally unstable, and can often be stabilized with one extra cross. (But isn't, as it serves as intellectual property protection for the seed company.) But some plants, soy beans being a biggest cash-crop example, can not be bred to be unstable. (See my comment above about Monsanto Roundup-Ready beans.)
Like seedless grapes?
Seedless watermelons are my favorite!
So you want to destroy all the people who create hybrid plants? Isn't that a bit cruel?
Edit: also, Monsanto has never actually used their non-replicating seeds. This is a common trope in the greenie hippie community that "Monsanto wants to own your food forever".
Strawman if I ever saw one.
Really? How? Has Monsanto used its termination patents?
>> These people are evil.
> So you want to kill them?
If you're being serious, saying "there is a special place in hell" does not equal "let's send them there".
True, he's not suggesting that they be sent prematurely, just that they should endure eternal torture afterwards. That seems harsh for growing a seedless grape.
People also say things in ways not to be taken super literally. "There's a special place in hell" is an idiom.
> Said of a person whom one considers to be especially wicked, evil, malevolent, etc. Often used facetiously or sarcastically.
From: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/there's+a+special+place...
So they're not really saying this either:
> just that they should endure eternal torture afterwards
They're really just saying, "these people are evil/wicked".
Let's try this: "greenie hippie who want to starve the humanity deserve a special place in hell".
Hmm? Not bad, I think?
What? You're saying that greenie hippies think that they're actually saving the humanity by forcing it to get close to the Great Spirit, Wisdom of The Anciens or some such nonsense?
Well, Monsanto also had good reasons for developing self-terminating seeds. They are more contained, have almost zero risk of accidentally spreading resistance to other species, and they still can be easily recreated by anyone once the patent expires.
I hope you don't eat any cultivar fruit or vegetable.
In general, invention of new things is something humanity's been tackling for quite awhile. Why would this apply specifically to food versus, well, everything?
There are inanimate objects that are manually made out of raw materials by humans. It can make sense to grant the inventor of such a thing a time limited monopoly on its production by banning anyone else from manufacturing it for sale and distribution.
Living beings are not inanimate objects that are manually made out of raw materials. They are not human-made. They reproduce and humans only create the environment for this to happen. You cannot invent a living being. You can invent a modification in the genome and thereby create a new breed, but that should not grant you the right to have a monopoly on the reproduction of those living beings.
Patents function only to limit the actions of what living beings can and cannot do.
Plus, it's seems false to paint this orchard as just an environment humans created where they reproduced. It's a place where the farmer very specifically reproduced them, not just the conditions.
> Patents function only to limit the actions of what living beings can and cannot do.
Like all other laws. I don't see how this is relevant.
> It's a place where the farmer very specifically reproduced them, not just the conditions.
Sorry to be so blunt, but the farmer is neither fucking peaches nor giving birth to them. Living beings self reproduce. Humans sometimes put a lot of work into creating the perfect conditions for that to happen, but that is irrelevant to the point. When I smash rocks together to create a tool I and only I created that. When I plant seeds for them to grow into fruits which contain many more seeds I did not create the new seeds on my own. That does not make my work any less valuable but it does change the nature of the action. The first scenario should be allowed to be restricted to the inventor for a limited time. The second scenario should not be restricted. The act of reproduction of life should never be seen as anyone's property.
I can go for a month, probably longer, without, say, the internet. I could also go a month without food, maybe, but there are people who can't. Food is different because it is essential to life.
The food that is patented isn't essential to life, though. Essentially all of humanity has lived all of it's lifetimes without this modern varietal of nectarines just fine.
There are certainly tons of cases where modern developments might be actually essentially to life or extend life like with medication, medical devices, temperature control, moves to modern electric technologies versus combustion to reduce pollution, etc. How do we incentivize new medication development, something way more lifesaving than nectarine varietals, without some period of exclusivity? At least there, twenty years from now, the solutions will be more accessible versus never developed.
This relates in no way to the availability of food, which in the US at least is high enough that starvation is the preserve of the terminally ill, anorexic/bulimic, addicted and indigent, rather than people who can't find calories to eat. This is almost entirely an economic issue that would be a lot easier to discuss without the incessant and repetitive emotional comments.
What does this have to do with anything? Not all species are patented.
If farmers dont want to pay for patented species, then they will grow unpatented food, which you can eat.
Breeding new crop varieties is relatively scientific and sophisticated work, like any other advances in technology and products. If you couldn't parent your work, there wouldn't be much incentive to do the work. America has had plant patents since 1930, there is nothing new about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Patent_Act_of_1930
Just a general thought on your comment style. Summarily declaring something "evil" means that you're not really interested in hearing any other comments on the topic, and that additional data or analysis of the issue will have no effect on your opinion.
Which, in and of itself, may be fine for you, but I find it to be the absolute least useful comments on HN.
I appreciate when somebody speaks with conviction about their beliefs.
What's the purpose of communication? Is it to convince, or to preach to the choir/your side? If it's the former, I doubt summarily labeling everything "evil" or "a human right" is going to change any minds. If it's the latter, what's even the point? Is it to make you feel good about yourself or make yourself look good in front of your activist friends?
> Summarily declaring something "evil" means that you're not really interested in hearing any other comments on the topic, and that additional data or analysis of the issue will have no effect on your opinion.
I'd say it is in the end an ethics issue. Sure, the tone may be offputting, but... I think there is value in having people around who actually hold beliefs and aren't as quickly willing to put their beliefs aside. Society as a whole benefits from a corrective to ultra-progressives - even if what the progressives want is a good thing (which, to be clear, it almost always is!), move too fast and you end up losing the masses along the way.
>I think there is value in having people around who actually hold beliefs and aren't as quickly willing to put their beliefs aside.
I don't know about you, but people who hyperbolically label stuff "evil" without providing justification seems like exactly the type of person who would flip-flop depending on whether it's politically expedient for them or not (eg. preaching fiscal responsibility when the opposition is in power, but then being fiscally profligate when they're in power).
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only thing I can say is that patents, unlike copyrights, seem to continue to expire in less than a lifetime (20 years).
> ALL our staple food crops and most non staples are genetically engineered by millennia of cultivation and selective breeding
And during the last 100 years, the yields for many types of plants have grown several _times_ because of modern selective breeding methods. Here's a nice graph for cereals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Index-of-cereal-productio...
So you want to go back hundreds of years and force people to live in hunger with frequent famines?
There are plenty of patent-free crops. So just plant them. And the patents eventually expire.
> So you want to go back hundreds of years and force people to live in hunger with frequent famines?
Sadly, there are theories that this is precisely something that is desired as population control of groups that are "less desirable". It's usually the same groups that say AIDS was designed for the same purpose.
> Patents on food crops, even genetically engineered ones, are evil
Eh, I'd say it's fair to give them a short window of patent protection. Say 20 years, akin to pharmaceuticals.
The only exception should be if the protected variety has a monopoly. Then it immediately loses patent protection.
20 years is the max length of nearly all patents. So you really aren't giving them any concession there.
Also, all patents are monopoly. That is actually what a patent provides, it provides a limited government sanctioned monopoly over the invention.
> all patents are monopoly
Come on. Every product is then a monopoly because it’s the only one of its kind.
If your GMO seed plants 80% of its crop in the country, no patent. Otherwise, farmers choosing to plant your seeds are making a choice and should pay.
You are perfectly free to keep selling what we've been eating. No one is forcing people to plant the new stuff.
If you make patents illegal, no one will breed new stuff. How does that help?
All that will do is cause people to grow the old stuff, which they still can, even if the patent exists.
Do you get what I mean? Adding a patent does not reduce anything, it only adds a new option.
> If you make patents illegal, no one will breed new stuff. How does that help?
There would still be public, industry-group and philanthropic research. But yes, probably much less.
And there still is today. But are they producing good nectarines? Apparently not as good as these.
I know that occasionally philanthropic research works out, but generally I find that people are motivated by profit.
> You are perfectly free to keep selling what we've been eating. No one is forcing people to plant the new stuff.
This common sense statement should be true, but is wholly ignorant of the lawsuits farmers deal with from seed suppliers
Which law suits would those be? It seems to me that the reality is that GMO seeds are really useful and all the lawsuits Ive seen are farmers wanting to use them without paying royalties.
If he donates these to a charity, what are the rules on taking a tax deduction for this unusual situation?
Can it have value for the purposes of a donation if you can't sell it? Would taking a tax deduction trigger a patent liability?
The entire crop cost is already tax dedeuctable by default. Taxes are on profits
Then that leads to the question... is it proper for the farmer to take the deduction for the costs of growing crops he is not legally allowed to sell?
Sure. Poor business decisions are entirely tax deductable as long as your intention is to eventually turn a profit. It is extremely common for business to do poorly or fail.
Most people dont waste money for fun, and the deductions are basically never worth the cost. (why would someone spend 100k on a business to save 25k on taxes? they would still net $-75k)
Also, if you continually loose money over many years, the IRS may question if it is a legitimate business or a hobby for personal gain.
regardless of how the contract is structured, no contract should allow or force a producer to throw products away. this is similar to a law in the EU that forbids producers or distributors of clothing to destroy products they don't want to sell.
once you plant a tree to grow fruit you should be allowed to keep harvesting that tree until its natural end. if there is an exclusive contract then the contract must not be allowed to be terminated before that end unless the grower is free to sell on the open market after termination.
anything else would allow patent owners to hold growers hostage ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶.̶
>Mora later sought to terminate his relationship with Giumarra, and he sold his nectarines to another fruit packer in 2023
The farmer sought termination and violated the contract.
ah, good catch. the question now is whether giumarra accepted the termination or not. i could not find that detail in the article. if they accepted it, then my argument holds (note that i am arguing how things should be, not what the actual current law on the matter is). if giumarra did not accept termination then the exclusive contract should still hold. (whether an exclusive contract is fair or not is another topic)
Would you bar a contract for the productivity of a tree for a given period of time, with a clause dictating how excess produce is to be disposed of?
yes, there should be no excess that needs to be disposed. if you produce excess you should reduce production.
A state of "excess production" can only be determined long after production parameters have already been committed to. Yields, logistics costs, and market capacity aren't knowable ahead of time.
sure, but the market consequence to overproduction is that the price goes down. if you are not allowed to destroy products just to keep the price up then you will self correct in time.
Notably, US healthcare is run with this mindset. Perfect planning for exactly the capacity that we need.
Works "great".
sorry, i wasn't clear. i am specifically talking about excess that needs to be destroyed in order to keep prices up. meaning, artificially reducing the supply by creating waste.
So should they ask the trees to fruit less, or cut them down knowing they can't get them back online for 10 years?
they should sell the fruits. and if can't sell all the fruit then yes, eventually they will need to reduce production.
The optimal quantity of discarded food is not zero.
true. but there is a difference between discarding food that has gone bad because you could not sell it, and discarding it without even trying to sell it because some exclusive contract prevents you from selling, or because you want to keep the price artificially high.
> no contract should allow or force a producer to throw products away
It doesn't, to my knowledge. It requires they not sell them.
that's the same thing.
if you can't throw it away you need to be allowed to sell it.
the point here is sustainable production. the EU is implementing laws around that. if you produce more than what you can sell, then you need to reduce production and stop wasting resources.
It’s not the same thing. He is allowed to give them away and is doing so. If Mora is in breach of contract, maybe a better remedy for the distributor would be monetary damages but that is not obvious.
There’s an interesting question of if the distributor misrepresented the deal to Mora as he claims, but from the summary it appears nothing related to that is recorded that the court finds legally relevant.
> that's the same thing
It's really not. Exhibit A: this farmer giving away his nectarines. Hell, maybe he can write off the loss as a donation.
seems like that would be double dipping and likely prohibited. They already get to write off the entire cost of prouction and carry losses forward 7 years IIRC.
I missed the free potatoes in Berlin https://www.the-berliner.com/english-news-berlin/4000-tons-o... , and now I'm missing this? Once again https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618898 all the action eludes me.
>locked in a legal battle with a company that claims exclusive rights over the variety of white nectarine he grows.
>[...] Fruit patents are becoming more common
this is unbelievably stupid. no company should have rights or patents over a variety of food.
If you spent decades doing selective breeding to obtain a more desirable product, you'd probably be a bit annoyed if others just stole the product from you and made money off of your hard work.
If the products are being bred from tax funded programs, then yes, anybody should have access to the new breeds, but if it's privately funded, then why should it be available for everyone? Without the protection, there isn't much incentive to invest time into developing better foods.
If someone grows a new tree from seeds after buying your fruit, their trees will take several years to bear fruit right? Works almost like a patent anyway.
(I don't know fruit growing well so maybe that's not true)
> you'd probably be a bit annoyed if others just stole the product
For sure, no one is arguing for stealing fruits here. However while you can steal physical fruits, you cannot steal genes.
> then why should it be available for everyone?
Why should it not be? You seem to view the right to breed a variety of some species that you created as some natural right and default. It is not. What you are arguing for here is the state going after people for creating the environment for plants to reproduce, which is a natural right.
The basic purpose of patents is to make it worthwhile to develop something new and valuable. They are unnatural - but useful. Working backwards, if we want people to spend time and money developing new breeds of plants, you arrive at these kinds of rules.
>you cannot steal genes.
Why not? You can steal bits, unless you think copyright law's bunk as well. You can even steal ideas (patents).
You can steal neither of those. You can copy them and in some specific cases copying bits or letters or some other human creative work might be unethical, in a lot more cases it can be illegal, but it is not theft.
But you can't just take a seed and make a new plant of same characteristics. Now I'm not sure if that's the case for nectarines but apples mutate massively between seed and plant that made it so basically all plantations are clones or clones + grafts.
You'd have better luck "stealing" it with some wire cutters and cutting some shoots off the trees
Plant patents incentivize the creation of disease resistant, tasty, and hardy varieties. If you remove the patents, you remove the incentive for private capital.
Capital to create new plants has to come from somewhere: public tax funding, grower-funded pools, or patent licensing. We do a mix of all three.
Farmers already have plenty of incentive for hardy and resistant varieties. People already have plenty of incentive for tasty varieties.
You don’t need patents. The single biggest technology driver has been maths. And it doesn’t have patents.
Patents stifle innovation.
This isnt even a patent case. Its a contracts case. The article says these trees arent under patent, the farmer signed a contract saying he would only sell to one supplier and now wants to sell to others.
> this is unbelievably stupid. no company should have rights or patents over a variety of food.
Wait until you hear about Monsanto/Bayer - a quick Google of "monsanto food patents" brings up the highlights.
>a quick Google of "monsanto food patents" brings up the highlights.
The cases seem fairly reasonable, given how the defendents were basically engaging in selective breeding to copy the traits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#Patent_li...
...and none does. You can grow and sell any peach you want; the tree has no sense of the childish tantrums of the state over its bounty.
This is a strong and obvious indications that the laws and statues as presented by the state are not in fact the actual underlying modes under which society operates.
> ..and none does.
Monsanto begs to differ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.
Of course, but my point is: Monsanto is obviously incorrect. It's plain to see. Plants grow without permission. Bytes flow without permission. Ideas propagate without permission.
All this silliness to create a huge complicated regime to pretend that these things are "property" in the same sense as your underwear is just so obviously childish, incoherent, and inconsistent with reality.
It's just a really elaborate gown purported to be worn by the manifestly naked emperor.
>Of course, but my point is: Monsanto is obviously incorrect. It's plain to see. Plants grow without permission. Bytes flow without permission. Ideas propagate without permission.
So you're against any sort of intellectual property?
> So you're against any sort of intellectual property?
I observe that the universe in which I live doesn't seem to include the concept of intellectual property, and that there is quite a lot of misery and confusion that arises from efforts to shoehorn it in.
Current IP rights are overly stringent and ones designed to protect IP actively detract from progress.
This is so simplistic.
They made a new varietal. Nobody is saying he can't plant any of the standard heirloom Nectarines. The patent will expire in a while, and then anyone can do it.
Honestly, how are you proposing incentivizing developing new varietals if nobody can have patents on any breeds at all? This is how it has worked for half a century and mild gripes aside, the quality of the produce in stores is WAY WAY BETTER than it was before (seriously, what is the last time you ate a Red Delicious apple?)
Have like... some awareness of the large functioning important system you are mindlessly breaking with throwaway comments.
> The patent will expire in a while, and then anyone can do it.
I've read this a couple of times in these comments. However, this "in a while" is meaningless. A quick search suggests plant patents are 20 years from filing of patent. That's not as bad as I was thinking after hearing about the copyright nonsense of 95 years of publication or 120 years from creation depending. That'd be multiple generations of farmers rather than just one.
Yes, I assumed that was common knowledge. 20 years is pretty reasonable.
> how are you proposing incentivizing developing new varietals if nobody can have patents on any breeds at all?
How do academics make scientific discoveries if the results are public?
Government, industry, and private patronage. People want better crops, they’ll fund and make contests for them
Well, yes. That's what is happening. The contest is called "market" and "the people" reward competitors by paying them.
Patents are used to enforce the rules so that competitors don't cheat.
Selective breeding requires sometimes _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work. This is not a good fit for academia and even worse fit for government programs.
profit share, royalties, etc. many ways to structure economic benefit
That... was exactly the deal he had and didn't like.
> Under the agreements, Mora was to pay Giumarra a royalty of $2.50 per tree and a 4% production royalty based off the gross sales of the fruit the trees produced, as well as a sales commission.
Reminds me of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountain.
"And the smell of rot fills the country.“ (Chapter 35)
This passage had a profound impact on me when I first read it in high school. Only later did I discover that such atrocities still happen regularly today.
Farms are mostly just businesses nowadays. Either they're heavily automated (and capital intensive) or they hire farm workers to do the work. Or both.
Holy astroturf
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> In its court filings, Giumarra says all rights to the Monalise variety are owned by Star Fruits Diffusion, a French company that works with plant breeding programs, while Giumarra holds the right to sublicense the variety for testing, production and sale.
> French company
Enough said. This US admin will nuke that agreement instantly. If it was a fellow American company, let it pass.
But it’s a US company collecting the money from the farmers. If they hold enough trumpcoin they have a pretty good case.
Oh sure, but go up the chain, which is exactly what these guys are doing. As soon as the US prez hears that some French fops in powdered wigs are preventing USA farmers from selling their nectarines in California, he's going to go ballistic (on his phone, during his toilet break).
Monsanto all over again.