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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Moral and Legal Patent Quandries

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  • From: Philip Stewart <philstewart24@yahoo.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Moral and Legal Patent Quandries
  • Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:53:07 -0800 (PST)

I tend to take a pretty hardline stance on patent
violation, and I would at least seriously consider
reporting any commercial violation of a plant patent
from a public breeding program, if I knew for sure it
was going on. (I don't approve of violating privately
held patents, but I kind of feel like robbing a public
program robs us all). Most of the time I don't know
for sure (although having worked in several programs
I've got a pretty good idea who the licensees are in
many cases), but I make a point of never doing
business with operations I suspect of plant patent
violation.

Enforcibility is another issue of course, but I think
the real leverage rarely comes from actually suing
people, though that should always be an option for the
most egregious cases. I think in most cases
embarrassment, limiting access to future releases (and
as a breeder I would certainly spread the word among
other programs if some one was stealing my stuff, and
soon no one is going to want to do business with
them), or at most the threat of legal sanctions, is
enough to bring a majority of the bad apples back in
line. You'll never get everyone to play fair,
particularly outside of the country, but you only have
to be pretty good.

As far as DNA tests to verify the identity of
something, I think that's not really an issue in most
cases, because the majority of offenders are marketing
it under the same name (if it is the same genotype,
it's a patent violation, if it's not, it's probably
fraud). If I release the 'Philberry', I'm going to
back it up by publishing at least a few years of data
proving it's as wonderful as I say it is. If you want
to steal it and sell it as 'Georgeberry', then you
have to either talk your customers into believing that
it's at least as good as the 'Philberry' they can buy
elsewhere, or you can go to the expense of doing your
own research, in which case you probably might as well
just pay the royalties.

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