[El_Mariachi]

You don't patent things, you patent methods. Monsanto has patented a method of inserting and manipulating certain gene sequences in soybeans. Growing offspring of existing modified beans is not the same as performing the modification.

If they wanted their seeds to have an expiration date they should have engineered that in there too. Soybean replicants.

[lutusp]

> You don't patent things, you patent methods.

That may be true now. There was a time, not so long ago, that a patent was denied to any idea that had not been reduced to practice, in a working physical embodiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduction_to_practice

Quote: "In United States patent law, the reduction to practice is a concept meaning the embodiment of the concept of an invention. The date of this embodiment is critical to the determination of priority between inventors in an interference proceeding."

(I hasten to add that the above rule about priority no longer applies. Because of recent changes, the U.S. is changing to a first-to-file system.)

Quote: "A 'working model' is usually a strong evidence to demonstrate actual reduction to practice. Unlike patent models of the 18th and 19th century, a working model is no longer a requirement of the U.S. patent law."

All this has been swept away by changes in the law, and we have the present patent system in which the patent office rubber-stamps virtually anything, and claimants work things out in court.

[jrkelly]

You can patent things other than methods. For example, If you invent a novel chemical you can patent it - that's the basis of the pharma industry business model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter