Re: [Patents] Suing uninformed customers

[Russell McOrmond <russell@flora.ca>]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:

> There's some intuition that industrial property should be a concern for
> industries only, not customers. If one patents a better mousetrap, one
> expects only people manufacturing or selling mousetraps to be affected,
> not customers trapping rats.
> 
> Of course information processing patents are specially hopeless, since 
> the customer's computer is the one performing any patented process.

  Wouldn't it be great if Patent law actually worked that way.  I would
argue that since in "commons-based peer production" (Free/Libre and Open
Source Software) that since the peers come from all sectors of the
economy, not just industry, that regulations on industrial sectors
should simply not apply.  Unfortunately getting Industry Canada 
and other regulators in this area to recognize this problem is 
quite hard.


  In Canada our supreme court is dealing with a case where a farmer is 
being charged for patent violation because seeds which he has saved 
contain the "roundup ready" gene injected by Monsanto.  In this case it 
isn't even a case of a customer being sued, but someone who isn't even a 
customer.



  Nobody knows how this trait got into his seeds, but the courts know
that:

  a) The farmer never bought this seed from Monsanto, and it shouldn't be
on his farm -- the farmer never wanted to be tainted by Monsanto seeds.

  b) The value-add trait of this GE seed is that it is resistant to a
certain pesticide ("Roundup" brand from Monsanto) which the farmer never
purchased or used.

  The most logical explanation is that seeds blew into his farm from an 
adjacent farm.  If there is an infringement at all it was done by a canola 
plant, not something that the farmer is in control of.

  Those interested can read more here:
  http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

  If you don't trust that source, there are supreme court documents that 
clearly show the problem.


  While protecting communications rights, cultural rights and creators'
rights in ICT from bad patents is what we are dealing with primarily in
this forum, this same area of improperly applied law has considerable
implications of food security and other more basic things as well.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Governance software that controls ICT, automates government policy, or
 electronically counts votes, shouldn't be bought any more than 
 politicians should be bought.  -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/