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Comment by fl0under | Hacker News Reader

Also the problem with GMOs is it transfers ownership of the plant from the public to the large companies that have modified it (as they will inventibly want to patent it). Is it really fair that they take thousands of years of evolution, change a gene or two, and become the sole owner of the strain? And often limiting the ability of the plant to reproduce, so you have to buy more seed from them. If it continues that way the amount of plants available under public ownership will continue to decrease.

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Plant patents date back to 1930, predating even the discovery that DNA is the genetic material.

In many crops the seeds planted are hybrids, which don't breed true either. That non-issue has been there since before you, and possibly your parents, were born.

What keeps the (gasp! shudder!) corporate ownership of these things from sinking us into a dystopian hellscape? Competition. You don't like one kind of hybrid? Buy a different kind. The seed makers compete fiercely for farmers' business. The same is true of GMOs.

> Plant patents date back to 1930

That doesn't mean that they are a good idea.

> In many crops the seeds planted are hybrids, which don't breed true either.

And in many other crops Monsanto sues the hell out of farmers who replant the non-hybrid seeds.

> Competition.

Are there actually seed makers that would not sue their customers for replanting?

Plant patents (and patents on new GMOs) are an excellent idea, and it's remarkable you could think othewise. They mean we actually get the improvements, since they cannot be immediately taken by those who didn't invest in their creation. They do NOT mean you have to stop using something that existed before the patent.

Monsanto had a contract with farmers to not replant the seeds. The farmers were free to not use the seeds and not sign the contract. Enforcement of contractual obligations is a vital glue that holds society together; why are you against it in this case?

In all this, I detect entitled selfishness on your part: you want (or you think the farmers should have) the benefits of these improvements, without having to respect the mechanisms that allow the improvements to be made.

OK, I think we are agreed that all seed providers would use the similar kind of contract. (I'll assume you concede this, since you didn't address my question about it.) In which case any claims of "competition" and "freedom" are somewhat hollow.

As for how patents (and other intellectual property rights) correlate with innovation, that is debated. Here's a random article I picked out of a web search: https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2018/do-pat...

For whatever it's worth, the research we're discussing here is being done not at a for-profit seed maker but at a non-profit university. Universities are good at getting government grants, for example, for innovations that would benefit everyone, like improved seeds.

There is no reason for a supplier of hybrid seeds to have this sort of contract, as the hybrid would not breed true.

As for patents: while patents in general have dubious applications, plant patents in particular are not dubious at all. Patents are absolutely essential here, because the cost of manufacturing is extremely low (just grow the plant!) If plants that breed true could not be patented then developing them would be worthless. The cost of development could not be recouped after the first sale.

Plant patents are considerably narrower in scope than utility patents, at least in the US. In particular you can't get plant patents that cover sexual reproduction of plants or asexual reproduction via edible tubers (like, say, potatoes do), so you can't use them to stop farmers replanting their seeds. That's why agritech companies wanted to be able to file utility patents on plants, which they eventually managed thanks to GMOs.

Also, the whole "plant patents date back to 1930" line is literally out of Monsanto's talking points.

Talking points tend to include facts. I'm sorry if the facts are not helping your narrative.

Yes, the 1930s plant patents are a bit different. But they are still corporations owning IP in plants. It didn't end the world then, it's nothing but a source of faux outrage now.

The only thing they become "sole owner" of is the newly modified plant genome.

The original one is still there for all to use.

I thought this was wrong, but it's been true in the USA since 2013. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/testing/genepatents

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