> Second, no farmer has ever been sued for accidental contamination with patented GMOs. There have been cases where farmers deliberately tried to concentrate trace contamination, but the courts properly recognized the deliberate nature of that.
Yes, deliberate use of the patented gene/interaction. That's still suing small farmers, doing farmer stuff, for IP infringement.
The farmer deliberately attempted to concentrate the gene. The only reason he would do this is to try to violate the patent. This was not an innocent action. Your argument here is like blaming a homeowner for catching a burgler.
No, in the case I'm thinking of he was doing something that wasn't normal at all. He was taking a field of mostly Roundup vulnerable soybeans and spraying it, killing off most of the plants, concentrating the ones that happened to have picked up the patented gene. There is no interpretation of what he was doing that wasn't clear and intentional violation of patent law. And thus he lost in court.
If farmers are trying to isolate a specific thing in their crops, they will kill the other plants, yes!
Artificial selection is a normal farming activity. At the very least it's thousands of years old, that part isn't what the patent is about.
Look, let's get back to the original post maybe? "Suing small farmers for copyright infringement isn't very nice." It was a different kind of IP infringement, otherwise nothing is factually wrong about this statement. We have some conflict about how patents should work in a situation like this, but that's not really the point here.
Look, you need to realize that in this case, the farmer lost in court. He was judged to have deliberately violated the patent. He wasn't innocent. His actions only made sense as an attempt to pirate the patented genes that he knew were there. He tried to argue that because the genes showed up in his crops he was entitled to concentrate them by this selection process and use them. In this, he lost.
Yes, let's get back to that original nonsense post. You are objecting to a patent holder defending their rights under the patent, taking deliberate and knowing violators of the patent to court. That position is bullshit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Note that no farmers have even been sued for accidental and involuntary contamination of their crops. Nor will they be, since they'd have an excellent defense there in the absence of any intention on their parts to violate the patent. The courts are not stupid on this sort of thing.
If I think a law is flawed, then proof of violation is not going to change my mind!
> You are objecting to a patent holder defending their rights under the patent, taking deliberate and knowing violators of the patent to court.
For this very specific type of violation.
I personally think certain kinds of copyright related to distribution are garbage and should not exist at all. I think it's bad if a company sues over them, even if the party being sued is very guilty.
> That position is bullshit.
Criticizing a law is not bullshit.
Criticizing a lawsuit over a violation you think isn't worth it, even if the violation is extremely blatant, is not bullshit either.
I'm not even saying the initial comment is on the correct side, just that it's a reasonable position.
Yes, deliberate use of the patented gene/interaction. That's still suing small farmers, doing farmer stuff, for IP infringement.
So it's not bullshit.