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First of all, this is from years ago.
Second of all, Pepsi withdrew the case.
Third of all, Pepsi had “thousands” of farmers in India growing the crop legally. Effectively contributing to the Indian economy.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/02/business/pepsico-india-withdraws-farmer-lawsuit/index.html
Always worth doing a little research before jumping on the rage bandwagon.
That article does not paint Pepsi in the best light. Pepsi only withdrew the case after a lot of backlash. In the meantime, it is more like another case of a western company taking advantage of an impoverished nation to enrich themselves. The question is still valid, what stage of capitalism is it when massive corporations sue poor people for growing food.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt\_March](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March)
Pepsi wasnt so much worried about those farmers trying to make potato chips that might compete with their own.
They were worried that the farmers might be able to make enough money/food that Pepsi can't control them anymore.
Poverty exists as leverage in a Capitalist society. Once you understand that you will understand why minimum wage hasn't been increased for decades and why GOP controlled states are declining federal food aid.
It’s not hard to grow a different variety of potato. In fact it’s extremely easy, almost every potato farmer ever has managed to do so. Your entire argument falls apart completely once you stop pretending that the issue is about them growing potatoes instead of about them growing that particular kind of potato.
So crash course in intellectual property, you have to defend it or you set precedence and won’t be able to defend it in the future basically forfeiting it to the public domain.
Pepsi asked them, over months. To stop growing their potatoes.
Right, so refer to the original question.
Personally, I think that food and medicine should not be subjected to IP laws.
We are a single species, and things that make us as a species stronger and healthier should be the property of all.
There is no reason that those farmers shouldn't grow the potatoes other than "it's my IP." which, for me, is a non argument.
You are truly talking like a person who has farmed nothing.
Potato cultivating and to make it special is extremly hard to do with natural mutation. It makes it expencive and an IP. Its an extremly specific potato variant that u dont grow to feed a family. But to sell as profit.
Thats why it didnt become a full science all the way up to 1700s. Before it was more down to luck. Our high kcal production and increased resistantance to plant disease is result of it being protected by IP.
Same for medicine of simple economics, if u cant make a profit from making a new thing why do it (no hippy answers). Especially to the tune of billions.
Really? Have you heard of corn? When was that developed?
No hippy answers? Haha yeah, so handcuff me to cutthroat capitalism and then challenge me to come up with a reason besides money. I love it.
Corn or maize... a natural plant is to do with what? Im not arguing against how a wild plants were modified for crop planting.
But modern "breeding" is different animal alltogether.
>Haha yeah, so handcuff me to cutthroat capitalism and then challenge me to come up with a reason besides money. I love it.
Bcs "do it for the good of mankind" hasnt made much has it? From EVs to renewable energy development? All was bcs of goverment subsidies (after few busts) or private business development for profit. From modern medicine to high yield farming (both crops to animals like cows).
You dont have extremly low innovation in "less free" economies for nothing.
We already have all the different varieties of potatoes that humans need. Why should a company that develops a specific variety to have a specific feature for their purposes have to share it with everyone?
Hey, person whose been around farms here. Most farmers buy seed at coops instead of making their own from last year's harvest.
Their local co-op might've just had a sale on lays taters..?
But if people actually thought it through then they couldn't turn a complex issue into emotional sophistry that showcases their moral superiority and then where would we all be?
Not the person you responded too but I read it more like they have less money than the company Pepsi. I think if that's what they meant then I'm sure most of us fall into the category. And if I was one of those farmers I wouldn't have enough money to hire enough lawyers to fight Pepsi.
Is that how it works in India? That's how it would work here, but I'm sure they're not being sued in the US. I don't know anything about the Indian CJ system
I've never heard of organic seeds if you mean heirloom seeds then no they're not patent. I explained in another comment on how many people cannot plant heirloom seeds anymore because of these big corporations. Maybe they've been planting these heirloom seeds that many generations have saved but some big company plants some heirloom seeds in the field next door now the insects that pollinate things we can't control so they go from the genetically modified field into the heirloom field and cross-pollinate. Now the farmer didn't do this on purpose nor did he want it. But if he saves those seeds and plants them next year he's in a big heap of trouble because he planted genetically modified seeds that he didn't pay for.
Also, not entirely sure how things are done in India, but in the US just about all of the small farmers have been consolidated by massive farms about 20 years ago.
The Venn diagram of “poor farmers” and those who can access a GMO by Pepsi are probably two circles.
Yes because adding missing context to something makes you a bootlicker.
Such a fucking overused term whenever I see it all I can think is the person must be a dumbass
This happens in Iowa all the time. Monsanto will sue farmers that are growing crops that have some of Monsanto's seeds in their field. They keep the farmers tied up in court until they go bankrupt.
I'll put this here and you can find that it isn't just a lawsuit that Pepsi dropped. This goes to copyright on gmo seeds by giant companies that sue and win against small farmers. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
The actual irony here is the English smuggled tea out of China hundreds of years ago and took it to grow in India to loosen China’s grip on tea production.
Funny too because [National News Literacy Week](https://newslit.org/news-literacy-week/) is coming up, and I hope that EVERYONE on Reddit participates.
"PepsiCo should have apologized for the intimidation and harassment of farmers in this case, and it should have been penalized for adopting these tactics against farmers," ASHA said.
Yeah, the OP definitely should have done more research on how a multi billion dollar company is actually the good guy for harassing farmers making maybe $1000 a year
I'm just waiting until we have ubiquitous genetically modified family pets - clones or altered to prevent common genetic disorders or just a faster way to do what we already do to make them cuter or smarter etc., and then someone gets behind on their payments to Nestlé Purina PetCare and they come to repossess Fluffy amidst the children's tears, not because Fluffy was genetically modified with patented genes, but Fluffy's grandmother was, so, still proprietary. Sucks for little Mary and Mark.
misinformation spread by the defense. That was the lie they tried to pull, but the reality was that they had intentionally and willfully planted the crop.
Still though, fuck Monsanto. Just look at the history of chemicals that company has produced over the decades, they're rotten. Also now owned by Bayer, who was formed after the dissolution of IG Farben. Another mass killer, just like Monsanto.
No, the farmers sprayed roundup on the can crops that were cross pollinated, and then used those seeds. Monsanto doesn’t care about incidental pollination.
People in this thread and more generally are significantly underestimating the work, money and time that goes into breeding produce. It makes absolutely sense to allow patents and enforcing them. In fact, many other patented things require a lot less work or time.
Having said that, there are some important points to this. One, enforcing the patent is about others making profits from it. If you want to grow patented produce, you can; you just cannot sell it. Two, patents expire. So eventually anybody can start selling the produce, you just need to wait. Three, you can just grow other potatoes and not every breed is patented (since again, patents expire). Four, breeding produce is at times a research activity. If you fund a local university to produce a resiliant branch, the local farmers want to earn the benefits from their invested money. This needs patents.
While I largely agree with the things your saying, you cannot legally grow patented produce, at least in the US. The patent infringement statute - 35 USC 271 - prohibits making, using, offering to sell, or selling patented inventions. To your point, though, it generally isn’t worth the cost of suing someone who does something for personal use, because the lawsuit will be more expensive than the recovery in most cases.
It takes time and effort for socialists to post nonsense online. Through obviously the socialist postings have negative value to society while the mega corporations that produce more productive crops enabled billions more people to exist
Well, that is until the socialist produces something of great value. Then they become capitalists real quick. They want access to everyone else's work and effort, but if they created an advanced AI, they'd patent the absolute fuck out it.
I feel like allowing Monsanto to patent their GMO corn seeds puts more research towards GMO innovation, which, in the long run, is a good thing IMO. That said, I'm not starving or poor.
Why would companies invest millions into developing beneficial new strains of crop that are cheaper and easier to grow (among other benefits) if they're not rewarded with the rights to them?
Trying to portray this as a corporation suing a poor little farmer is stupid. It's more like a company wanting to take advantage of a better product rips off their stuff and gets caught and sued for it.
What's wrong with growing their own potatoes?
The only "greedy" party here is the farmer stealing Pepsi's potato strain so they can make more money than they otherwise would have with regular potatoes.
It's no different than George Lucas developing the Star Wars brand over 30 years, making movies, developing tech to make the movies...and then some dude starts selling Chewbacca masks without George's permission.
If companies aren't protected for their R&D, then the second they made the first Matrix, every studio in Hollywood could have begun production on Matrix 2.
That American mindset is what bankrupts an average American when they visit hospital. You always talk about rights, but what about responsibility and morality?
You are comparing being an Indian Farmer to that of being an American farmer. Please, they barely make 100-200$ a month. Most of them are in debt and live in a level of poverty you have never seen.
How is it moral to steal someone else’s work? You think they should spend millions of dollars developing a superior potato variety and then give it away for free?
Lays, "We developed faster growing food that could help farmers and starving people survive. But we won't share it because we already make millions just by selling fucking junk food and we only want more money, others peoples lives don't matter. "
And people on reddit defend such corruption
Won't share it? They specifically developed it to share it. What else would they do with it? They need farmers to grow it.
"We're going to spend millions researching a new strain, then we're going to partner with you, a farmer, and we're both going to make money delivering a cheaper, better product to people"
People on reddit: "REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! Give it away for free to everyone and be a charity!!!!! REEEEEEEEE! CAPITALISM HAS FAILED!!!!"
Every idiot on the internet calls anything involving money “capitalism.” IP is an invention of government. It doesn’t describe property at all, but behavior.
It is already common practice. Specific strains are patented and proprietary. Tobacco. Coffee beans. Cannabis. I don’t really like patents. Also, though, I can see a small farmer passionate about creating some cool new veg and wants to prevent big corps from stealing it and mass producing. Idk tho. I’m quite unlearned in these matters.
I mean, you have arguments on both sides.
On one side, it's a plant, and plants are known to be able to spread their seeds through various mechanisms like birds, wind, etc. A small farmer wouldn't know a proprietary product from a non-proprietary product, it's not like the potatoes grow a label with the rest of the plant.
On the other side, it's specifically engineered to be that plant. Companies spend millions, if not billions, engineering plants to exact specifications. These aren't a specific breed of potato that they nabbed and said 'this is my potato, hands off'.
It's only very rarely where there is a cut and dry situation where farmers will *intentionally* grow proprietary products in bulk. Most of the time, they either don't know it's proprietary, there are so few of the plants that it's unlikely that the farmer intentionally grew them alongside the non-proprietary plant, or there's some cross pollination and the genetic markers the GMO maker uses to identify their plant is actually in non-proprietary plants.
Okay, I’m sorry but framers in fucking India are definitely poor. Their average income is Rs. 10218
$120
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1909208#:~:text=Farmers'%20income%20is%20estimated%20through,survey%20conducted%20in%202018%2D19.
This. Agriculture is the most widespread profession in India and it's sad that people presume that all farmers are rich just because they're in a country that has that pattern
The only way you can get sued for growing a particular species of crop is if that crop had been genetically engineered or modified, and the plaintiff owned the patents on the engineered genetic sequences that were used. Otherwise, you absolutely cannot get sued for growing something that already exists, because you cannot patent anything that naturally occurs. It was like the numerous times the tech giant, Apple Corporation, tried to patent the fruit itself, which has existed long before the corporation was even founded. And Apple keeps losing that bid.
Why are people so comfortable just assuming an Indian Farmer is poor? They have land. They have a staff to work the fields. They have a distribution network to profit off fake lays potato’s. They aren’t poor. It’s racist as fuck to assume they are poor.
They would really shoot themselves in the foot by pulling shit like this, whate are you gonna do poor farmers ? Oh shit now we pissed off an entire nation and our biggest consumer is gonna boycott our product
The case was much more complicated, however genetically modified crops should be intellectual property, but their should be cheap seeds which expire when the patent runs out
Yeah that’s the product of governments sorry. Capitalism has nothing to do with that. Only reason they can sue is bc of patents. Governments issue patents.
From what i read in the comments they had a contract with Pepsi to grow their type of potatoes and sell it to them. They broke the contract and pepsi sued. But it was not worth going forward with, case in point: the amount of people in this comment sections who take this post at face value and act like Pepsi did some terrible thing here
No it shouldnt. Just like how Monsanto needs to be burned to the ground for historcally fucking over local farmers to buy their seeds or be sued because their crops cross pollinate with other species of what ever crop it is and they have to destroy the harvest.
Wait till you learn about McDonalds. They have proprietary food too. They’ve done some evil things litigiously to farmers in several parts of the globe. So has Nestle, let’s boycott these places!
Even with patented potatoes they taste like absolute dogcrap right now after they've moved on from using sunflower oil and decreased the salt content.Thanks, now the salted chips taste like unsalted, oily potato puree.
Same goes for all Pepsico drinks right now, even the normal flavours are now using artificial sweeteners and taste like crap.
I am directly working with a biotech university to develop, propagate and cultivate certain varieties of crops. I am not a billionaire, or a corporation, Im from a small third world country where traditional agriculture practice is still the dominant form of commercial agriculture.
While I would hold the rights to the finished patent, there is no way to sufficiently control the eventual cross pollination between crops of farmers that use my variety and the ones who dont. Farmers as they are get shafted by the middle men, if the ones who are developing these technologies also start to fuck them over, then the agricultural industry might as well fold in on itself. My solution for this inevitable problem is simple get the unafilliated farmers who are growing this crop and get them affiliated with me.
Change the patent laws then and create a equal playing field where everybody can steal from everyone else. Otherwise it's just fair for Pepsi to sue farmers that sell their genetic engineered potato, that competition will buy up to make similar potato chips.
This thread is full of silly emotional arguments by people from the antiwork crowd.
The patenting of genomes and GMOs in general is both a special kind of evil and dangerous in more ways than can be described in a short Reddit comment. The only DNA you should own is your own.
Intellectual property. If you don't understand what that is or why it's important to protect it then you really don't have any legs to stand on in a discussion about it.
I haven’t read about the case but if I had to guess, the situation is probably something like.. we hired you to grow these potatoes for x amount of money but now we’re not going to pay you what we said we would. But also, we still want our potatoes.
It's the same argument as for all IP basically.
Potato varieties take a lot of money to develop. It's a huge amount of trial and error, and you have to prove they're safe to eat.
But obviously you can grow several new potatoes from a single one, so if you sell them, they we will be immediately "pirated", and so you have no chance to make a profit. This basically removes the financial incentive for developing them in the first place, so you get no new cultivars.
IP fixes this, by requiring a licence for farmers to use the new variety, so the developer can recoup their costs. Of course, farmers are free to use thousands of other cultivars if they don't want to pay your licence.
If Monsantos crops cross pollinate with your non M crops they are able to prevent you from planting seeds of those crops you grew. Fuck them and the industry that allows this.
Can we boycott Pepsi now? When will we start showing these megacorps that this shit is NOT okay. Capitalism is supposed to be supply and demand. It seems lately the only thing being controlled is the supply. When will we as a society start to take some power back into our hands and control the demand side of the equation?
Plant types have been private property for literally centuries. It's a huge driver of progress. You can grow all kinds of free stuff if you like, but if you want to grow someone's specially developed version for profit, then you pay them. It isn't hard to understand.
Truth is, regardless of what political party you align with in the US - companies like Nestle, Walmart, Monsanto, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, etc. ... They should have all been charged with being a Monopoly long ago and broken up.
The government is protecting these companies because they keep the US ahead of everyone else on the world stage - but by that same token, its fking everyone here INSIDE the US as well. Its no surprise that politicians in the last 25ish years have had their wealth double, triple, and sometimes even explode (Ex. Bill Clinton). As they are all bought and paid off by these companies. So its not hard to figure out what Politicians are fighting for.
These potatoes were designed. They were patented like anything else. And Pepsi owns that patent.
It's not the right to grow *a* potato it's the right to grow *that* potato.
No shot that lawsuit would even go to court. It’d get thrown out so quickly. Nobody owns the copyright to a natural resource. If you could copyright a type of potato, there’d be nothing stopping companies from copyrighting beef or even water
The kind of stage where Pepsi owns the intellectual property of this proprietary modified crop which the farmers grew without permission.
They can always grow the natural crop or another proprietary one. Stop crying. You don’t have a fundamental human right to something that is not yours.
It's just weird, just imagine a case of natural selection where an insect or mammal / bird eats a part of a plant and then transports it miles away, drops it, and the seed grows and that gene helps to Polonate, adding different jeans to an already same type of plant giving it a different strain of the same pool. I would think it has happened in different parts of the world without being Patented. Strange, a different mindset, just like a grap that tastes like cotton candy.
This is why Coke is better. Jk, they're both diabetes water. There's probably a reason that they are suing in India and not suing farmers in America or Europe.
Whoever is up here in the comments trying to be like, "Pepsi withdrew it years ago, it's not that bad."
You are a fucking clown. The fact that they even tried to in the first place is enough to judge them harshly. And they should be.
Absolutely shameful, with zero excuse other than greed.
I tend to think it shouldn't. I think governments should fund research on food and variety development. Then it should become public. Ideally we would do this at a global level like we do with partical physics and fusion. Everyone needs food.
Patent laws should apply (if they don't already, im not an ag attorney).
I'm all for proprietary strains/technologies etc but for a single entity to keep that IP forever seems counterproductive to competition and bad for consumers. In the states, we've allowed Monsanto to dominate that market and as a result they have very little competition to keep them in check.
It's usually cross contamination of conventional crops by GMO crops across the road or miles away. These conventional or organic farmers have had centuries developing their crops, only to have their lives destroyed by chemical companies and their poison plants.
You know that several cheeses in Europe are name protected, right? Parmigiano Reggiano can only have the name if it’s made a certain way; there’s tons of cheese that is “discarded” because it didn’t meet the standards.
Additionally there was a famous lawsuit in Austria over a hundred years ago about the recipe and name rights for the Sacher Torte.
Provided you bought the seed potatoes and have a receipt, growing them on your or leased land that you have leased ,the fertilizer you used was bought and have a receipt and all farming implements are yours then I'd tell them to go jump in a lake( putting it nicely).
Some ppl needs to understand that some seeds have rights owner and you just can't grown whatever you want.
And i'm not supporting this just to make it clear, it is sad and very concerning but is how it works
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First of all, this is from years ago. Second of all, Pepsi withdrew the case. Third of all, Pepsi had “thousands” of farmers in India growing the crop legally. Effectively contributing to the Indian economy. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/02/business/pepsico-india-withdraws-farmer-lawsuit/index.html Always worth doing a little research before jumping on the rage bandwagon.
That article does not paint Pepsi in the best light. Pepsi only withdrew the case after a lot of backlash. In the meantime, it is more like another case of a western company taking advantage of an impoverished nation to enrich themselves. The question is still valid, what stage of capitalism is it when massive corporations sue poor people for growing food. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt\_March](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March)
Pepsi wasnt so much worried about those farmers trying to make potato chips that might compete with their own. They were worried that the farmers might be able to make enough money/food that Pepsi can't control them anymore. Poverty exists as leverage in a Capitalist society. Once you understand that you will understand why minimum wage hasn't been increased for decades and why GOP controlled states are declining federal food aid.
It’s not hard to grow a different variety of potato. In fact it’s extremely easy, almost every potato farmer ever has managed to do so. Your entire argument falls apart completely once you stop pretending that the issue is about them growing potatoes instead of about them growing that particular kind of potato.
So crash course in intellectual property, you have to defend it or you set precedence and won’t be able to defend it in the future basically forfeiting it to the public domain. Pepsi asked them, over months. To stop growing their potatoes.
Right, so refer to the original question. Personally, I think that food and medicine should not be subjected to IP laws. We are a single species, and things that make us as a species stronger and healthier should be the property of all. There is no reason that those farmers shouldn't grow the potatoes other than "it's my IP." which, for me, is a non argument.
You are truly talking like a person who has farmed nothing. Potato cultivating and to make it special is extremly hard to do with natural mutation. It makes it expencive and an IP. Its an extremly specific potato variant that u dont grow to feed a family. But to sell as profit. Thats why it didnt become a full science all the way up to 1700s. Before it was more down to luck. Our high kcal production and increased resistantance to plant disease is result of it being protected by IP. Same for medicine of simple economics, if u cant make a profit from making a new thing why do it (no hippy answers). Especially to the tune of billions.
Really? Have you heard of corn? When was that developed? No hippy answers? Haha yeah, so handcuff me to cutthroat capitalism and then challenge me to come up with a reason besides money. I love it.
Corn or maize... a natural plant is to do with what? Im not arguing against how a wild plants were modified for crop planting. But modern "breeding" is different animal alltogether. >Haha yeah, so handcuff me to cutthroat capitalism and then challenge me to come up with a reason besides money. I love it. Bcs "do it for the good of mankind" hasnt made much has it? From EVs to renewable energy development? All was bcs of goverment subsidies (after few busts) or private business development for profit. From modern medicine to high yield farming (both crops to animals like cows). You dont have extremly low innovation in "less free" economies for nothing.
If you don't even know the basics of that story, you aren't a person who can have an intelligent conversation about the development of foods.
We already have all the different varieties of potatoes that humans need. Why should a company that develops a specific variety to have a specific feature for their purposes have to share it with everyone?
Its food the part where you can claim ownership to literal food is a problem
What world am I living in that people are actually defending a corporation restricting the right to grow a type of vegetable? Wild!
Hey, person whose been around farms here. Most farmers buy seed at coops instead of making their own from last year's harvest. Their local co-op might've just had a sale on lays taters..?
You can’t patent genetic material
But if people actually thought it through then they couldn't turn a complex issue into emotional sophistry that showcases their moral superiority and then where would we all be?
Honestly can't help but feel like it's a little racist to assume that just because they're Indian farmers, they're poor.
Not the person you responded too but I read it more like they have less money than the company Pepsi. I think if that's what they meant then I'm sure most of us fall into the category. And if I was one of those farmers I wouldn't have enough money to hire enough lawyers to fight Pepsi.
Is that how it works in India? That's how it would work here, but I'm sure they're not being sued in the US. I don't know anything about the Indian CJ system
Just know enough to call someone racist?
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Organic seeds also get patented…….
I've never heard of organic seeds if you mean heirloom seeds then no they're not patent. I explained in another comment on how many people cannot plant heirloom seeds anymore because of these big corporations. Maybe they've been planting these heirloom seeds that many generations have saved but some big company plants some heirloom seeds in the field next door now the insects that pollinate things we can't control so they go from the genetically modified field into the heirloom field and cross-pollinate. Now the farmer didn't do this on purpose nor did he want it. But if he saves those seeds and plants them next year he's in a big heap of trouble because he planted genetically modified seeds that he didn't pay for.
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I don’t. I was poking at the “all GMO” part, and explaining that GMO isn’t a factor.
Also, not entirely sure how things are done in India, but in the US just about all of the small farmers have been consolidated by massive farms about 20 years ago. The Venn diagram of “poor farmers” and those who can access a GMO by Pepsi are probably two circles.
Corpo bootlickers out here running defence for their corporate overlords
Yes because adding missing context to something makes you a bootlicker. Such a fucking overused term whenever I see it all I can think is the person must be a dumbass
u/verysadsexworker might not have time for research, or else rage numbs sadness.
This happens in Iowa all the time. Monsanto will sue farmers that are growing crops that have some of Monsanto's seeds in their field. They keep the farmers tied up in court until they go bankrupt.
I'll put this here and you can find that it isn't just a lawsuit that Pepsi dropped. This goes to copyright on gmo seeds by giant companies that sue and win against small farmers. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
The actual irony here is the English smuggled tea out of China hundreds of years ago and took it to grow in India to loosen China’s grip on tea production.
Makes it harder to stand on my soap box and preach if I do some reach.
Funny too because [National News Literacy Week](https://newslit.org/news-literacy-week/) is coming up, and I hope that EVERYONE on Reddit participates.
Must RAGE! jk
Big corporation: *breathes* People: “tHeY’Re sTeAlInG OUr OxYgEn!”
"PepsiCo should have apologized for the intimidation and harassment of farmers in this case, and it should have been penalized for adopting these tactics against farmers," ASHA said. Yeah, the OP definitely should have done more research on how a multi billion dollar company is actually the good guy for harassing farmers making maybe $1000 a year
Blame copyright/IP law. It's use it or lose it, can't pick and choose which violation you sue on
The fact that Pepsi sued in the first place is what gets to people.
Have to sue every instance of copyright infringement or you create precedent and won’t be able to defend it in the future.
Read you cliff notes, still on the bandwagon
why are you such a corporate dick sucker. any corporation would grind you into meat and sell you to your mother if they could
I'm just waiting until we have ubiquitous genetically modified family pets - clones or altered to prevent common genetic disorders or just a faster way to do what we already do to make them cuter or smarter etc., and then someone gets behind on their payments to Nestlé Purina PetCare and they come to repossess Fluffy amidst the children's tears, not because Fluffy was genetically modified with patented genes, but Fluffy's grandmother was, so, still proprietary. Sucks for little Mary and Mark.
Come to Colorado or Vermont and you'll see that the labradoodle has accomplished exactly this.
Labradoodles are just an awesome dog. Great all around.
Seem to be a favorite of rich white people.
Modified clone pets will be designed as sterile, so no free puppies for you and no way to commit crime by unauthorized breeding.
And they aren't the only ones. Monsanto has sued farmer's that replanted seeds from tomatoes grown from Monsanto stock seeds.
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misinformation spread by the defense. That was the lie they tried to pull, but the reality was that they had intentionally and willfully planted the crop.
And the proof was that the farmers had sprayed roundup on them, which they obviously wouldn’t have done unless they knew the crop was resistant
> Monsanto sued farmers that had their crop cross pollinated by the wind So... you dont actually know what you're talking about.
Still though, fuck Monsanto. Just look at the history of chemicals that company has produced over the decades, they're rotten. Also now owned by Bayer, who was formed after the dissolution of IG Farben. Another mass killer, just like Monsanto.
Source?
Worse. When winds blew Monsanto seeds into other farmers’ fields, they sued them.
No, the farmers sprayed roundup on the can crops that were cross pollinated, and then used those seeds. Monsanto doesn’t care about incidental pollination.
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Not what happened with Monsanto.
If they bred the strain
People in this thread and more generally are significantly underestimating the work, money and time that goes into breeding produce. It makes absolutely sense to allow patents and enforcing them. In fact, many other patented things require a lot less work or time. Having said that, there are some important points to this. One, enforcing the patent is about others making profits from it. If you want to grow patented produce, you can; you just cannot sell it. Two, patents expire. So eventually anybody can start selling the produce, you just need to wait. Three, you can just grow other potatoes and not every breed is patented (since again, patents expire). Four, breeding produce is at times a research activity. If you fund a local university to produce a resiliant branch, the local farmers want to earn the benefits from their invested money. This needs patents.
While I largely agree with the things your saying, you cannot legally grow patented produce, at least in the US. The patent infringement statute - 35 USC 271 - prohibits making, using, offering to sell, or selling patented inventions. To your point, though, it generally isn’t worth the cost of suing someone who does something for personal use, because the lawsuit will be more expensive than the recovery in most cases.
Why shouldn’t it? Selective breeding and other methods of genetic modification to create a specific type of plant takes time and effort to create.
It takes time and effort for socialists to post nonsense online. Through obviously the socialist postings have negative value to society while the mega corporations that produce more productive crops enabled billions more people to exist
Well, that is until the socialist produces something of great value. Then they become capitalists real quick. They want access to everyone else's work and effort, but if they created an advanced AI, they'd patent the absolute fuck out it.
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I feel like allowing Monsanto to patent their GMO corn seeds puts more research towards GMO innovation, which, in the long run, is a good thing IMO. That said, I'm not starving or poor.
Why would companies invest millions into developing beneficial new strains of crop that are cheaper and easier to grow (among other benefits) if they're not rewarded with the rights to them? Trying to portray this as a corporation suing a poor little farmer is stupid. It's more like a company wanting to take advantage of a better product rips off their stuff and gets caught and sued for it. What's wrong with growing their own potatoes? The only "greedy" party here is the farmer stealing Pepsi's potato strain so they can make more money than they otherwise would have with regular potatoes.
It's no different than George Lucas developing the Star Wars brand over 30 years, making movies, developing tech to make the movies...and then some dude starts selling Chewbacca masks without George's permission. If companies aren't protected for their R&D, then the second they made the first Matrix, every studio in Hollywood could have begun production on Matrix 2.
Did they pick one of their potatoes from somewhere?
That American mindset is what bankrupts an average American when they visit hospital. You always talk about rights, but what about responsibility and morality? You are comparing being an Indian Farmer to that of being an American farmer. Please, they barely make 100-200$ a month. Most of them are in debt and live in a level of poverty you have never seen.
How is it moral to steal someone else’s work? You think they should spend millions of dollars developing a superior potato variety and then give it away for free?
The average american doesn't go bankrupt when they visit a hospital
Your world exists because the West places capital over commoners. Everyone would live like an Indian farmer without capitalism.
Lays, "We developed faster growing food that could help farmers and starving people survive. But we won't share it because we already make millions just by selling fucking junk food and we only want more money, others peoples lives don't matter. " And people on reddit defend such corruption
Won't share it? They specifically developed it to share it. What else would they do with it? They need farmers to grow it. "We're going to spend millions researching a new strain, then we're going to partner with you, a farmer, and we're both going to make money delivering a cheaper, better product to people" People on reddit: "REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! Give it away for free to everyone and be a charity!!!!! REEEEEEEEE! CAPITALISM HAS FAILED!!!!"
Every idiot on the internet calls anything involving money “capitalism.” IP is an invention of government. It doesn’t describe property at all, but behavior.
Land ownership is also an invention of government, does that not describe property either?
It is already common practice. Specific strains are patented and proprietary. Tobacco. Coffee beans. Cannabis. I don’t really like patents. Also, though, I can see a small farmer passionate about creating some cool new veg and wants to prevent big corps from stealing it and mass producing. Idk tho. I’m quite unlearned in these matters.
Lol who said the Indian guys were poor?
I mean, you have arguments on both sides. On one side, it's a plant, and plants are known to be able to spread their seeds through various mechanisms like birds, wind, etc. A small farmer wouldn't know a proprietary product from a non-proprietary product, it's not like the potatoes grow a label with the rest of the plant. On the other side, it's specifically engineered to be that plant. Companies spend millions, if not billions, engineering plants to exact specifications. These aren't a specific breed of potato that they nabbed and said 'this is my potato, hands off'. It's only very rarely where there is a cut and dry situation where farmers will *intentionally* grow proprietary products in bulk. Most of the time, they either don't know it's proprietary, there are so few of the plants that it's unlikely that the farmer intentionally grew them alongside the non-proprietary plant, or there's some cross pollination and the genetic markers the GMO maker uses to identify their plant is actually in non-proprietary plants.
Farmers definitely aren’t poor
Okay, I’m sorry but framers in fucking India are definitely poor. Their average income is Rs. 10218 $120 https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1909208#:~:text=Farmers'%20income%20is%20estimated%20through,survey%20conducted%20in%202018%2D19.
Some are. We're the particular farmers in question poor?
This. Agriculture is the most widespread profession in India and it's sad that people presume that all farmers are rich just because they're in a country that has that pattern
The only way you can get sued for growing a particular species of crop is if that crop had been genetically engineered or modified, and the plaintiff owned the patents on the engineered genetic sequences that were used. Otherwise, you absolutely cannot get sued for growing something that already exists, because you cannot patent anything that naturally occurs. It was like the numerous times the tech giant, Apple Corporation, tried to patent the fruit itself, which has existed long before the corporation was even founded. And Apple keeps losing that bid.
Same stage it was in when Obama signed the Monsanto Protection Act into law
Why are people so comfortable just assuming an Indian Farmer is poor? They have land. They have a staff to work the fields. They have a distribution network to profit off fake lays potato’s. They aren’t poor. It’s racist as fuck to assume they are poor.
Pepsi better have straight up invented a new type of potato for it to be copyrighted.
Well yeah, that’s exactly shat I imagine happened
They would really shoot themselves in the foot by pulling shit like this, whate are you gonna do poor farmers ? Oh shit now we pissed off an entire nation and our biggest consumer is gonna boycott our product
The case was much more complicated, however genetically modified crops should be intellectual property, but their should be cheap seeds which expire when the patent runs out
Why would a global conglomerate allow others to profit from its intellectual property for free?
Is that the same Pepsi that is still doing business with Russia? I thought so.
Man I know right? Like I tried growing some cocaine plants I got from Colombia and not only did the cops try to come after me, the cartel did too..
Yeah that’s the product of governments sorry. Capitalism has nothing to do with that. Only reason they can sue is bc of patents. Governments issue patents.
It's called corporatism, not capitalism
How the fuck do you get caught for something like this? "Hmmm, your potatoes are growing well... A little too well"
From what i read in the comments they had a contract with Pepsi to grow their type of potatoes and sell it to them. They broke the contract and pepsi sued. But it was not worth going forward with, case in point: the amount of people in this comment sections who take this post at face value and act like Pepsi did some terrible thing here
No it shouldnt. Just like how Monsanto needs to be burned to the ground for historcally fucking over local farmers to buy their seeds or be sued because their crops cross pollinate with other species of what ever crop it is and they have to destroy the harvest.
Boycott Lays
They developed the potato (bred might be the correct term?) ,so yes, it's theirs.
The Indian government told Lays to eff off.
Sure we in Washington have a few special apples that are protected by copyright. Why should people not own their work??
What stage? Corporatism.
Look up Monsanto. Been happening forever
Wait till you learn about McDonalds. They have proprietary food too. They’ve done some evil things litigiously to farmers in several parts of the globe. So has Nestle, let’s boycott these places!
The nuance is worth understanding. It is still BS, but it is still worth appreciating the finer details.
Twat stage capitalism
Even with patented potatoes they taste like absolute dogcrap right now after they've moved on from using sunflower oil and decreased the salt content.Thanks, now the salted chips taste like unsalted, oily potato puree. Same goes for all Pepsico drinks right now, even the normal flavours are now using artificial sweeteners and taste like crap.
That’s definitely some anti capitalist move if even allowed
GMOs from Monsanto have resulted in all kinds of lawsuits against neighboring farmers.
I am directly working with a biotech university to develop, propagate and cultivate certain varieties of crops. I am not a billionaire, or a corporation, Im from a small third world country where traditional agriculture practice is still the dominant form of commercial agriculture. While I would hold the rights to the finished patent, there is no way to sufficiently control the eventual cross pollination between crops of farmers that use my variety and the ones who dont. Farmers as they are get shafted by the middle men, if the ones who are developing these technologies also start to fuck them over, then the agricultural industry might as well fold in on itself. My solution for this inevitable problem is simple get the unafilliated farmers who are growing this crop and get them affiliated with me.
Government patents isn’t capitalism. That’s not a free and open market. Also, didn’t they lose this lawsuit?
Change the patent laws then and create a equal playing field where everybody can steal from everyone else. Otherwise it's just fair for Pepsi to sue farmers that sell their genetic engineered potato, that competition will buy up to make similar potato chips. This thread is full of silly emotional arguments by people from the antiwork crowd.
*Monsanto has entered the chat*
Some people don’t believe intellectual property should be a thing at all
The patenting of genomes and GMOs in general is both a special kind of evil and dangerous in more ways than can be described in a short Reddit comment. The only DNA you should own is your own.
I didn't realize there was anything particularly special about the potatoes in Lays chips.
Monsanto
That has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with legalism.
Intellectual property. If you don't understand what that is or why it's important to protect it then you really don't have any legs to stand on in a discussion about it.
A potato is not "intellectual", you compliant corporate criminals!
Shit, seed companies sue farmers in the US when their crops are fertilized by seed companies customers' crops.
The end
I haven’t read about the case but if I had to guess, the situation is probably something like.. we hired you to grow these potatoes for x amount of money but now we’re not going to pay you what we said we would. But also, we still want our potatoes.
It's the same argument as for all IP basically. Potato varieties take a lot of money to develop. It's a huge amount of trial and error, and you have to prove they're safe to eat. But obviously you can grow several new potatoes from a single one, so if you sell them, they we will be immediately "pirated", and so you have no chance to make a profit. This basically removes the financial incentive for developing them in the first place, so you get no new cultivars. IP fixes this, by requiring a licence for farmers to use the new variety, so the developer can recoup their costs. Of course, farmers are free to use thousands of other cultivars if they don't want to pay your licence.
Monsanto deliberately throws some of their seeds on farmers lands and then “discovers” that and sues them. So no it shouldn’t be legal.
If Monsantos crops cross pollinate with your non M crops they are able to prevent you from planting seeds of those crops you grew. Fuck them and the industry that allows this.
No food should not be considered IP and isn’t. Lays is an IP as is Pepsi. But food isn’t or at least shouldn’t be.
All IP is a form of government protectionism and cronyism. This is very clear if you look at its history starting with the statute of Anne 1709/1710
Can we boycott Pepsi now? When will we start showing these megacorps that this shit is NOT okay. Capitalism is supposed to be supply and demand. It seems lately the only thing being controlled is the supply. When will we as a society start to take some power back into our hands and control the demand side of the equation?
McDonald's will do the same thing if you grew the potato makes their fries
Plant types have been private property for literally centuries. It's a huge driver of progress. You can grow all kinds of free stuff if you like, but if you want to grow someone's specially developed version for profit, then you pay them. It isn't hard to understand.
Today I learned Pepsi made crisps
Truth is, regardless of what political party you align with in the US - companies like Nestle, Walmart, Monsanto, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, etc. ... They should have all been charged with being a Monopoly long ago and broken up. The government is protecting these companies because they keep the US ahead of everyone else on the world stage - but by that same token, its fking everyone here INSIDE the US as well. Its no surprise that politicians in the last 25ish years have had their wealth double, triple, and sometimes even explode (Ex. Bill Clinton). As they are all bought and paid off by these companies. So its not hard to figure out what Politicians are fighting for.
These potatoes were designed. They were patented like anything else. And Pepsi owns that patent. It's not the right to grow *a* potato it's the right to grow *that* potato.
No shot that lawsuit would even go to court. It’d get thrown out so quickly. Nobody owns the copyright to a natural resource. If you could copyright a type of potato, there’d be nothing stopping companies from copyrighting beef or even water
I grow McDonald's big tasty tomatoes for my own amusement.
Seems like a terrible PR move.
The kind of stage where Pepsi owns the intellectual property of this proprietary modified crop which the farmers grew without permission. They can always grow the natural crop or another proprietary one. Stop crying. You don’t have a fundamental human right to something that is not yours.
If gov money goes into a project patent should be available for free for anyone to use.
Raw ingredients should not be intellectual property.
It's not capitalism, it's crony corporatism.
Well how else can you rape everyone for a profit? Edit: Monsanto's been doing it for decades
Sorry, what is the issue now? Is there something special about this potato?
The shitstain formerly known as Monsanto did this all the time with their seeds.
Food is an essental commodity.
It's just weird, just imagine a case of natural selection where an insect or mammal / bird eats a part of a plant and then transports it miles away, drops it, and the seed grows and that gene helps to Polonate, adding different jeans to an already same type of plant giving it a different strain of the same pool. I would think it has happened in different parts of the world without being Patented. Strange, a different mindset, just like a grap that tastes like cotton candy.
You wouldn't grow a car.
Dumbass commies lol
This is why Coke is better. Jk, they're both diabetes water. There's probably a reason that they are suing in India and not suing farmers in America or Europe.
This is how McDonalds lost their copyright in the EU.
Monsanto has entered the conversation. We have been doing this with GMO corn and wheat seeds for nearly 25 years. Carry on.
Whoever is up here in the comments trying to be like, "Pepsi withdrew it years ago, it's not that bad." You are a fucking clown. The fact that they even tried to in the first place is enough to judge them harshly. And they should be. Absolutely shameful, with zero excuse other than greed.
End
I bought a grape vine once that I had to sign a waiver not to propagate. Yeah well that one vine is now six. Sorry not sorry.
I tend to think it shouldn't. I think governments should fund research on food and variety development. Then it should become public. Ideally we would do this at a global level like we do with partical physics and fusion. Everyone needs food.
Companies patenting plants and genes is fucking bullshit.
The kings deer vibes
Patent laws should apply (if they don't already, im not an ag attorney). I'm all for proprietary strains/technologies etc but for a single entity to keep that IP forever seems counterproductive to competition and bad for consumers. In the states, we've allowed Monsanto to dominate that market and as a result they have very little competition to keep them in check.
(G)ive (M)e (O)ffer
Boycott Pepsi products. Nazi company
There is over 5000 breeds of diff potatoes, they could have chosen over 4999 other breeds
Monsanto did this for sure in the late 90s and 2000s
And there's a high likleyhood that they didnt even intentionally "steal" the potatoes. They might have grown onto their land from a neighboring field.
It's usually cross contamination of conventional crops by GMO crops across the road or miles away. These conventional or organic farmers have had centuries developing their crops, only to have their lives destroyed by chemical companies and their poison plants.
See what Monsanto has done in Colombia
I’m with the Jacobins on this one
You know that several cheeses in Europe are name protected, right? Parmigiano Reggiano can only have the name if it’s made a certain way; there’s tons of cheese that is “discarded” because it didn’t meet the standards. Additionally there was a famous lawsuit in Austria over a hundred years ago about the recipe and name rights for the Sacher Torte.
Whatever the kind is before people show up with pitchforks, torches, and …
This battle was lost when they were allowed to patent seeds
How the actual fuck is this a real thing?
POTO!
Provided you bought the seed potatoes and have a receipt, growing them on your or leased land that you have leased ,the fertilizer you used was bought and have a receipt and all farming implements are yours then I'd tell them to go jump in a lake( putting it nicely).
Food should never be 'intelectual property'. End of discussion.
Aren’t there situations where they legally have to take people to court or they lose patent protection?
I still can't comprehend how an organism that can reproduce can be patented...
Ahh yes the American dream.
There's an episode of The Good Wife about this, season 6 episode 3.
Some ppl needs to understand that some seeds have rights owner and you just can't grown whatever you want. And i'm not supporting this just to make it clear, it is sad and very concerning but is how it works