All my humble opinion of course.
On the context of possible
wrong-doing by Bowman:
I do agree Bowman possibly did something wrong.
This is strictly in the context of Patent Law and application
thereof.
From the ruling, it looks like he may have deliberately ensured
the harvesting of GM seeds. Now that could have been through the normal
farmiing mechanism (right) or he could have altered that process - for example,
by spraying a heavier dosage of Roundup Ready on his crop then otherwise prudent
(wrong).
This is a philosophically discussed wrong because I don't - not
for an instant - believe genetics should be allowed to be
patented.
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On the topic of whether or not something
natural - or something that could occur naturally - should be allowed to be
patented:
I believe it was wrong to allow a patent on the seed in the
first place. If the seed could be "discarded into the wild and grow" then a
patent should not be allowed. Nature itself would then be responsible for
dilution of the value of the arbitrary human assigned monopoly.
Would the
Supreme's draw a line that allows nature to infect an otherwise pure
crop?
If not: then even when you deliberately, consciously intended not
to use GM seeds - you could be found having infringed the patent. This is
wrong. A person should be able to go out to Government owned land, harvest a
plant, and plant it without having to worry about infringing
patents.
Another item to ponder:
If a person took an absolutely
"cerified by Monsanto" clean seed, planted that, went through successive
generations to allow nature to help the plant develop an immunity to Roundup
Ready, could they - in effect - generate a "clean room" implementation of the
seed? In such a scenario, how would the Supremes view the seed if the genetic
makeup showed an alteration in the gene that matched Monsanto's?
With
questions like the above, the only safe path for farmers to take in order to
avoid infringing is:
destroy any soybean plants that sprout up on their
property and find another crop to plant
The drawback - of course - would be
that the soybean plant could very well become extinct.
But perhaps with
that occurring - there would be recognition in both Congress and the Supreme
Court as to why patents on genetics is such a bad
thing.
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A very interesting question to ponder:
If
Monsanto found wild soybean plants with their genetic modifications growing on
Government land: would Monsanto find the Government in breach of their patents
and require the Government to actively hunt down and destroy all wild soybean
plants?
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