[rayiner]

Playing group politics is non-sensical here. That farmer will happily invoke the legal system on you for trespassing on his property, why should we be so sympathetic now that Monsanto has invoked the legal system for his trespassing on theirs?

[jacquesm]

Because it isn't theirs.

[rayiner]

Monsanto thinks its theirs, and they've got a non-trivial legal argument behind their contention. They'll take you to court to enforce their rights, just like the farmer will if you trespass on his land or try to worm your way out of a purchase contract if prices go down, or if he thinks you did those things.

If Monsanto is wrong and they have no such legal right, that's fine. They'll lose in court, or at least they ought to. But you're making it seem like we should put a thumb on the scale in favor of farmers, just because they're farmers. Everyone takes advantage of the law when it serves their purposes. Indeed, a tremendous amount of law is traceable to serving the purposes of farmers (versus say hunters/gatherers). Indeed, even things we think of as modern instruments, like derivatives contracts, have their roots in farming.

I should note: I don't disagree that Monsanto shouldn't have a claim when farmers don't know their seeds have GMO DNA, either as a result of cross-pollination or not knowing the origins of the seeds. I think it's a weakness of the patent system that "intent" doesn't count for anything.

[danielweber]

Indeed, a tremendous amount of law is traceable to serving the purposes of farmers (versus say hunters/gatherers).

This might be one of my all-time favorite HN comments, because it's caused me to imagine how weird real property would look to the hunter-gatherer only used to personal property, and all the arguments they would use to make against the concept of real property.

One can see the hunter-gatherers gathered up around Hunter News long ago:

* Some farmer somewhere has decided that the crops he just left laying around are somehow his! Well, that makes no sense. If they were his, he should have kept them on his person! Everyone knows that! It's perfectly obvious that things you leave lying around belong to everyone and the next person who can pick it up gets to use it!

* They call it "real property" but it's not "property" -- you can't take it with you! Duh!

* Oh, sure, they try to say the ways it's like personal property, like the person who made it has a moral right to it, or that they wouldn't have built that house if they didn't get to keep it. Balderdash!

* Someone explain to me why you even need "real property" for society to function. It seems we didn't have it for thousands of years and everything worked okay!

* Did you know that under "real property" you can be excluded from certain land, just because someone else "says" it's theirs?

* What are they going to do, put a cop on every single piece of land to make sure no one trespasses? This will collapse under its own weight.

[vidarh]

> * Did you know that under "real property" you can be excluded from certain land, just because someone else "says" it's theirs?

The interesting part is that most developed countries do still have structures in place to explicitly restrict the ability of landowners from preventing access to certain land. Either in the form of laws, or through public ownership.

E.g. in Norway there's a concept called "allemannsretten" ("public rights") that explicitly guarantee the right of the public to access "utmark" which is effectively any non-built-up part of land outside of urban cores. On top of that, there are special building restrictions on building near the coast line to ensure public access to beaches or the sea in general. Not only can you walk through any forest you please, no matter whether someone owns it, but you can gather berries or mushrooms there without obtaining permission. You do however generally need their permission to hunt.

In the US and elsewhere it is more commonly provided for through massive government ownership. E.g. federal land in the US makes up a massive 28% of the land mass. In the UK the Crown Estate owns more than half the coast, and massive amounts of other land, etc.

But while we've shifted substantially towards favouring private land owners, we still recognise that unfettered private property rights substantially restricts the freedom of movement of others.

[tptacek]

You just moved the goalposts. In the comment Rayiner replied to, you invoked us-vs-them, but when challenged, you retreat to a substantive claim. Why not just concede his point and move on with your broader argument?

[jacquesm]

I don't think it was me that moved to the 'trespassing' analogy.

Monsanto claims those seeds are their intellectual property, when actually it is the process of modifying the seeds that they came up with. So they are claiming trespassing where in my view there is no such thing happening, they are claiming trespass on a public road.

[tptacek]

Again, you're engaging a substantive argument that is different than the one Rayiner refuted. You said:

Me: Judges, patent lawyers, regular lawyers.

You: farmers

Rayiner is right: that was a very flimsy argument. You should concede it instead of pretending you didn't make it.

[jacquesm]

How about: I don't follow you at all.

The groups of people that I indicated that were splitting legal hairs over this can be divided into those that make a living splitting legal hairs and those that make a living plowing earth. If you feel that the latter are undeserving of protection against the former then fine, I concede. Personally I think that they should be allowed to get on with their lives without the IP battle being extended to their fields (pun intended).

It serves no purpose and I don't think that anything good can/will come of it, and potentially some very bad stuff may be the end result.

Feel free to disagree with that.

[tptacek]

Now you're back to your original argument, which is that farmers are morally superior to lawyers because they plow the earth. How can that possibly make sense? There are legal protections that should be enjoyed by farmers but not lawyers?

That was Rayiner's response to you and it seems self-evidently true. We strive towards a rule of law, not a rule of farmers, or a rule of philosopher kings who pick the meritorious occupations and penalize the rest.

Vernon Bowman didn't simply plant Roundup-Ready seeds by accident. He purchased clearly-marked Roundup-Ready seeds at commodity seed prices and then sprayed his fields with glyphosphate-based herbicides to take advantage of it. That isn't Monsanto's contention; Bowman admits to having done it. Maybe he's right and there's a patent exhaustion claim that makes doing that lawful, but it's hard to argue that Monsanto shouldn't have their day in court to verify it.