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by maxerickson 4870 days ago
There is at least some merit to the idea that the pollinated field is manufacturing the patented invention without a license.

(Which just points back to discussing the merits of granting such patents)

1 comments

There is some merit there. However, it is no different than getting a patent on some protocol that sends bytes in an IP packet, and suing people who own routers for patent infringement, because those routers are copying the packet on reading it from the wire, and sending out a copy of the originally transmitted signal. This is arguably manufacturing a patented product too. So is any IDS that copies the packet to a buffer to do analysis on the stream.

"That's ridiculous!" a bunch of you are saying right now. You're right, because that's how the IP protocol works. Things get copied around, it's built into the basic underlying technology process you are utilizing. Yet, how is a plant producing pollen and sharing it's genes around with nearby neighbors not part of the underlying biological process the engineered genes are using?