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Comment by phillc73 | Hacker News Reader

After initial transportation failures, sealed terrariums were used by Robert Fortune to send stolen tea seedlings from China to India,[1] thus helping the British to break the nineteenth Century Chinese monopoly on tea production.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H9J1AM2/

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That same old war, even today.

Why were sealed terrariums needed?

The seeds transported on their own would begin to germinate during the long voyage to India. The terrariums allowed the seeds to start sprouting and growing in a healthier environment than in the ships holds.

In the mid-19th Century it was called a Wardian Case[1], named after the inventor.

I recall the issue was with the transported seeds failing to germinate after arrival in India.

This NPR article is a review of the book linked to above and has more details, including an excerpt:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125237...

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/how-a...

Funny wording to use "break" for IP theft, it looks different when the British do it compared to when the Chinese do it, doesn't it?

There's a difference between ressources and IP.

Not for cultured saplings. A plant growing in the forest is a resource, a carefully bred strain cultured over hundreds or thousands of years is nationalized IP.

> a carefully bred strain cultured over hundreds or thousands of years is nationalized IP

Is that just your opinion, or is there an internationally accepted legal framework around that? Could you perhaps post a link where I might learn more?

It was the prevailing opinion at the time, and many compnies, some state-owned, have and do own patents on plants and their derivitive compounds. While its possible laws and treaties existed then, I am unaware of, I understand it was a literal trade secret, that had been stolen. It would not be hard to interpret that as theft (literal; of seedlings, or monetary; by damages) regardless of precedent. I know contries are still very protective. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-court...

Just opinion... this kind of theft predates current law, though. Think of the silkworm smugglers [1] as well. Some crops an agri/zoo cultures were considered strategic resources and tightly controlled by the state. No idea what current international law says about stuff like this.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_i...

Is there? We patent plants on one hand and on the other use raw ideas as a resource to build virtual and financial empires.

Is there? If I steal a prototype from a company or tea saplings and ruin the companies business? If there is any it looks very superficial to me.

People don't generally know much about plant breeding, so they have no appreciation for it. They think almost production-ready lineages just grow out there, god-given to the humankind. They don't realize there can be 10s or 100s of years R&D work behind a cultivar.

I'm pretty certain Monsanto disagrees with that statement.

The lines get real blurry with GMO.

You can’t steal something that’s not legitimately your property. IP isn’t a justified legal concept, it’s a form of illegitimate regulation used by corporations to cement monopolies and threaten the competition with legistlation

How do tangible property rights differ?

If you take someones intellectual property, they still have it too. If you take someones tangible property they don't have it anymore.

If you take somebody else's opportunity to monitize their ideas, then they don't have it anymore

Property is physically defined, and is justified as an extension of actions (I have a right to think for myself, therefore act on my own thoughts, therefore shouldn't be interfered with. I am taking the action of "storing this object I made" (for example), so to steal it is to infringe on my action is to infringe on my right to think for myself is to infringe on my rights).

"Intellectual property" is a bad analogy to physical property, isn't justified by such a chain of reasoning, and in fact the IP enforcers are infringing on the rights of the second inventor (or in our mess of a legal system, the person who failed to file papers with the government first).

Even patents/copyright are eventually broken.

IP rights are an exchange of temporary protection for ideas and implementation, in order to encourage both innovation and disclosure.

The concept of IP didn't exist back then plus he did say the seeds were stolen.

In 1848? It most certainly did. First modern patent is probably the system in Florence in the 1400's, but versions of the concept date back to 500BC. First US patent was 1790.

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