| I found the article pretty rewarding, here's my attempt at a summary: The article is about the OSSI (Open Source Seed Initiative). Since 1985 it's possible to get "utility patents" for plants. This allows you to claim that something like "easily harvestable broccoli" (say a breed with a specific shaped head) is your unique invention. Plant breeders are worried about the same chilling effects we see in software patents. Breeding something like "really red carrots" could get you sued. This is not an academic concern as thousands of patents are being filed. Big companies are (naturally) treating the patent-ability of plant breeds and traits as a "land rush", an opportunity to lock away whatever profitable ideas they can. This is viewed as an encroachment on the commons by old-school plant breeders, who note that many of the specific things being patented have been worked on for decades (or maybe, thousands of years if you look at the big picture) in basically an open-source manner. They value seed freedom in the same way as a hacker might view freedom of code and ideas. Plant breeding experts and enthusiasts have been working for years to oppose this trend, or at least carve out some reasonable exceptions, but things just seem to be getting worse. Major "industrial" crops like corn and soybeans are pretty much locked down, covered by 500 and 250 patents respectively in 1999 (more today). Today, it would be hard to grow those in a commercially viable way without using someone's IP. Now there is more interest in vegetables by multinationals. This seems much worse to OSSI because it covers a wider variety of "things people eat" and encroaches on non-industrial breeders and growers more. Tired of lobbying and "slow change", the group in the article wanted to create a movement like the free software movement, but for seeds. However, there's no legal basis for copyleft in this area because patents are different from copyright. Copyright is automatic, allowing easy "copylefting". To apply this scheme to patents, they would have to apply for patents for each of their breeds or traits before they can dictate licensing terms, which would be onerous, expensive and still legally dubious. The group couldn't find a way to construct a copyleft system for seeds, but they're still intent on creating and popularizing a movement. They're putting non-enforceable "shrink wrap" honesty licenses on their seed packets. Another avenue to preserve seed freedom is to focus on breeding "open pollinated" varieties (e.g. sexually reproduced), since these preserve genetic diversity and are harder to lock down with IP laws. |