4 ms·
I wonder if this means I can buy a product from someone that, unbeknownst to me, violates a patent, and the patent holder can come after me.
by codgercoder 13y ago
I wonder if this means I can buy a product from someone that, unbeknownst to me, violates a patent, and the patent holder can come after me.
- OGinparadise 13y agoNot come after you but maybe make you stop using it.
- alyandon 13y agoThere are no free passes like that in the US patent system as far as I'm aware. You don't have to knowingly infringe a patent to be taken to court by a patent holder and potentially held liable for patent infringement.
- OGinparadise 13y agoMaybe, but they sue a few here and there to send a message, not everyone doing it.
- alyandon 13y agoTrue, that's usually the case. However, it is still entirely up to the whim of the entity asserting a patent claim (rightly or wrongly) as to whether or not you end up with a very large legal bill. That's a huge amount of liability and personally it terrifies me.
- OGinparadise 13y agoOK, that's true but in this case, he almost certainly knew what he bought, as stated on the SCOTUS ruling.
- jwcooper 13y agoI'm not a fan of patenting genes in seeds, but in this case he knew that some of the seeds he was buying contained Monsanto seeds, but figured since he was a small fish in a big pond that Monsanto wouldn't mind. In Monsanto's view, they need to protect their investments in R&D. From the article: Starting in 1999, he bought some ordinary soybeans from a small grain elevator where local farmers drop off their harvest. ... He knew that these beans probably had Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene in them, because that's mainly what farmers plant these days. But Bowman didn't think Monsanto controlled these soybeans anymore, and in any case, he was getting a motley collection of different varieties, hardly a threat to Monsanto's seed business. 'I couldn't imagine that they'd give a rat's behind,' " he said.
- mimiflynn 13y agoIs there any information about the person that sold the seeds in question? It seems that Bowman bought seeds from Monsanto, planted them, sold the harvest, bought other seeds at a grain elevator from someone else, and got in trouble when he planted them. Why is Bowman in trouble and not the grain elevator guy that sold the seeds? Is it that Bowman signed an agreement with Monsanto when he bought seeds from them?
- SageRaven 13y agoMany folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law: the guy at one time signed something with Monsanto stating his exclusive source of RR soybeans would be Monsanto. However, if I buy 160 acres of land, and plant that land in soybeans from a non-Monsanto granary with some RR seed in it, then how could I be culpable if I had no dealings at all with Monsanto? I am guessing a case wouldn't be a straight 9-0 SCOTUS ruling.
- tbrownaw 13y agoYes. I've heard (here, I think) of patent trolls that prefer to go after customers rather than producers of whatever is supposedly infringing, because it's easier to convince the smaller customers to settle out of court rather than fighting and getting the patents declared invalid.
- jlarocco 13y agoI don't think your question can be answered from this case. The farmer here had signed an agreement with Monsanto, and knew the second hand seeds he was buying were covered by Monsanto's patent. If the farmer had never signed an agreement with Monsanto the case may have turned out differently.