On 2018-08-11 12:53 PM, graham wrote:
> On 2018-08-11 9:07 AM, Dave Smith wrote:
>> On 2018-08-11 9:02 AM, jmcquown wrote:
>>> On 8/11/2018 8:52 AM, graham wrote:
>>
>>>> OTOH, were there any scientists on the jury? A competent lawyer
>>>> could convince a jury that homeopathy is scientifically valid.
>>>
>>> I don't know about the jury, but Monsanto likely had an army of lawyers.
>>
>> True.Â* They are the company who sued a Canadian farmer for using their
>> Roundup resistant product without paying the licensing fee.Â* He never
>> bought their product, but it was growing on his property. He felt that
>> he was entitled to plant the seeds from the crop he harvested on his
>> property.Â* If I ran the world,Â* I would have allowed him to sue
>> Monsanto for not controlling their product and allowing it to
>> contaminate other farmers' fields.
>
> He maintained that the *seed* had blown in from a neighbour. Yeah,
> right! He'd grown it before and knew that it was a licensed product.
> This was one case where I was on Monsanto's side, not that I approve of
> the company, which is now owned by Bayer.


I thought that they deal was that he had used Round Up and that some of
the canola still grew, so he harvested that and used the seeds. I don't
think there was any evidence that he had ever bought the patent
protected seed or that it had not landed in his field accidentally. The
argument was that he knew that the stuff that survived the RoundUp
treatment was resistant and that he selectively harvested it and used it
without paying the usage license fee.

The way I see it is that his field was contaminated with a seed that
turned out to patented. The onus should have been on Monsanto to keep
their crop under control, and that if it ended up on the farmer's
property without him having purchased it and intentionally planting it,
then it is his... finders keepers. He should then be free to use it for
seed.