Sunday, January 19, 2014

Goliath Monsanto Wins Again

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a group of farmers the right to challenge Monsanto's seed patents, a decision critics charge allows the biotech giant's "reign of intimidation" to continue.
The plaintiffs in the suit, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto, sought to protect themselves from lawsuits by the corporation for patent infringement should Monsanto's genetically engineered seed contaminate the farmers' crops.

Monsanto has sued over 100 farmers for patent infringement.Jim Gerritsen, president of lead plaintiff OSGATA, previously explained, "We are not customers of Monsanto. We don't want their seed. We don't want their gene-spliced technology. We don't want their trespass onto our farms. We don't want their contamination of our crops. We don't want to have to defend ourselves from aggressive assertions of patent infringement because Monsanto refuses to keep their pollution on their side of the fence. We want justice."
The farmers' and seed producers' battle to preemptively to protect themselves began in 2011 with a case filed in a federal district court in Manhattan. Then, as we previously reported,
Their case was dismissed in February 2012 by Federal Judge Naomi Buchwald, but attorney Dan Ravicher of the not-for-profit Public Patent Foundation [which is representing the plaintiffs] said, "The District Court erred when it denied the organic seed plaintiffs the right to seek protection from Monsanto's patents."
In July of 2012 the group filed an appeal to reverse the lower court's decision.
In June of 2013, a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dealt the farmers a blow in dismissing the case.
"In light of the Court of Appeals decision, Monsanto may not sue any contaminated farmer for patent infringement if the level of contamination is less than one percent," Daniel Ravicher, Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) and lead counsel to the plaintiffs, said in a statement on Monday. But the Supreme Court's decision is "disappointing," Ravicher said, and "it should not be misinterpreted as meaning that Monsanto has the right to bring such suits."

 Organic dairy farmer and plaintiff Rose Marie Burroughs of California Cloverleaf Farms adds that "GMO contamination levels can easily rise above 1% and then we would have zero protection from a costly and burdensome lawsuit."
OSGATA's Gerritsen slammed the Court's decision as putting a "notorious patent bully" above family farmers.
"The Supreme Court failed to grasp the extreme predicament family farmers find themselves in," stated Gerritsen. "The Court of Appeals agreed our case had merit. However, their safeguards they ordered are insufficient to protect our farms and our families."
"This high court which gave corporations the ability to patent life forms in 1980, and under Citizens United in 2010 gave corporations the power to buy their way to election victories, has now in 2014 denied farmers the basic right of protecting themselves from the notorious patent bully Monsanto," Gerritsen stated.

Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, another plaintiff in the case, added, "Once again, America's farmers have been denied justice, while Monsanto's reign of intimidation is allowed to continue in rural America."

By Andrea Germanos from here


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Maybe Monsanto won again because they were right. Maybe the only people who will making money out of this are the lawyers for the organic growers. They should’ve never brought the lawsuit in the first place. You bring a lawsuit because you have been damaged or you are in imminent danger of being damaged. The organic growers couldn’t show one example of someone being sued by Monsanto because of accidental mixing of GM seed or pollen with the organic crop. Sometimes you have to admit you are wrong. I guess the organic growers can’t accept reality. Maybe the facts that they are using are wrong.

JMoore said...

You are wrong. Percy Schmeiser of Canada was sued by Monsanto regarding transgenic pollution of canola seed and took it all the way to their Supreme Court. Monsanto has sued hundreds of farmers accusing them of patent infringement due to transgenic pollution.There is also a case in Australia set to go next month regarding an organic farmer named Steve Marsh who lost his organic certification due to transgenic pollution. The farmers did have precedence for this suit simply based on the fact that transgenic pollution is possible and has occurred and can be used as an excuse by Monsanto and other companies to sue organic farmers to put them out of business. Transgenic pollution is the one tactic these companies are using to take over the seed market. Just ask the farmers of Mexico who have also seen their maize biodiversity destroyed because of it. I guess you just never know where Monsanto plants will show up on the Internet however to try to push lies.