Well, in Argentina there are not patents for plants at all (genetically modified or not) if they can reproduce themselves. And for what its worth, Software Patents do not exist in Argentina either.
Intelectual Property is protected by copyright. I leave here a translation of an extract for that law. It only allows "inventions" as something that can have a patent. And in its 6th article, it explicitly excludes the following:
Article 6 - They are not considered inventions for the purposes of this law:
a) Discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
b) Literary or artistic works or any other aesthetic creation and scientific works;
c) Plans, rules and methods for performing intelectual activities,
playing games or for economic and business activities as well as computer programs;
d) Ways of presenting information,
e) Surgical, diagnostics or therapeutic treatment methods, applicable to the human body and animals;
f) The juxtaposition of known inventions or mixtures of known products, variations in their form, dimensions or materials, except in the case of combination or merger so that they can not function separately or that the qualities or functions thereof are modified to obtain an industrial result not obvious to a person skilled in the art;
g) All kinds of living matter and substances preexisting in nature.
Art. 7 - Are not patentable:
a) Inventions whose exploitation in the territory of Argentina must be prevented to protect public order or morality, health or life of people or animals or to preserve plants or avoid serious damage to the environment
b) All existing biological and genetic material in nature or a replica thereof, in the biological processes implicit in animal, plant and human reproduction, including genetic processes involving material capable of conducting its own duplication in normal and free conditions as it happens in the nature.
Well, most of those treaties are about defending IP, which is possible through other methods.
For example, according to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent
most countries exclude software patents or computer programs, and lots of them are also signatories of many of the same treaties. So, its a very complex situation.
Also, and curiously, it seems that the article 1350 of the Civil Code Of The Russian Federation, is almost the same word by word. So, my guess is that this kind of wording exists in many other countries.
>PS: I find it amusing to be down-voted just for translating the text of the law. I swear didn't write it, lol.
This is probably because quoting the translated law looked like attempting to intentionally obfuscate.
The very point is that IPR can be defended by using some other name for it than "patent", so quoting a piece of law that says what cannot be "patented" is not relevant when the rights are granted by some other law - and in the case of Argentina they should be, because it is signatory to international convention that obligates it to have such a law.
Seed rights don't have to be protected by "patents". For instance, in my country, the name (translated to English) "plant breeder's right". It has its own piece of legislation, and it is in many ways like a patent, but it is not called a patent. In the US, the same thing is called a patent, but that is just terminology.
It isn't just a mater of terminology. Plant breeder's rights are different from patents and generally give much less power to the rightsholder. For example, the US has them via the Plant Variety Protection Act, but they only give protection to one single variety of plant, they allow researchers to use that variety without having to get a license, and they permit farmers to replant saved seeds. For this reason, US agribusinesses invested a lot of legal resources in convincing the courts to let them take out normal utility patents on plants, which had previously been considered unpatentable. (Plant patents were not the same thing, no matter what Monsanto's propaganda department have been claiming.)
And here I thought the guaranteed monopoly period of a patent -- in order to recover development costs -- was the business' reward for public disclosure of the technology.
Should there be any limits to patents? If not, why not? Because the US government has said so? And that's enforced by privately negotiated treaty with other countries, without the consent of their citizens?
I'd be worried if I didn't think I'd be able to drop seeds into a PCR machine in ~10 years, and dump their genome online in a matter of hours. I'm not worried.
Sigh... Law is a social construct. It was decided that it is in the public interest to provide periods of exclusivity in exchange for public disclosure, because afterwards the public can make free use of the information. Otherwise, everything would be trade secrets, and everything would have to be reverse engineered. Things like generic drugs probably wouldn't exist -- if Coke can protect a recipe for 70 years, I doubt the drug companies would have much issue doing the same. And I'm sure there's plenty of technology that strategically stays out of patent space, because it's more valuable without public disclosure.
> And that's enforced by privately negotiated treaty with other countries, without the consent of their citizens?
Are you implying that all law must be ratified by every citizen before being enacted? Because otherwise, your voting for your representatives was your consent.
Sigh? Sigh. You do realize that while law is a social construct, representatives are under no obligation to enact the will of the people, right? And Congress has notoriously low approval ratings? And that only when shamed into taking action they do so? Right.
> Are you implying that all law must be ratified by every citizen before being enacted?
No. I'm implying that government representatives outside the US are voting in favor of laws that are in direct opposition of their citizens' interests (you've heard of the TPP? Of course you have), and that in most cases there is no short-term recourse (short of protests and bloodshed).
Enter stage right "civil disobedience" and the ignoring of copyright law worldwide through online distribution of media. Its already starting to happen with 3D scanning/printing, and will eventually happen with genetic information (including patented seeds).
Argentina has a democratically elected government. How can you say that the government's treaty agreements were made without the consent of their citizens?
> The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users
It could also be looked at, "The USPTO, and Congress, have allowed patent and copyright holders the ability to rent seek far beyond what was ever intended when the USPTO, copyright, and patents were first conceived."
>Or I wait long enough for an intelligent majority of Congress to invalidate the ability to patent or copyright seeds.
Good luck with that, considering the constitution grants Congress the power to promote scientific progress through granting limited exclusive rights to authors. I doubt they will find invalidating seed patents aligned with promoting scientific progress.
That argument hinges more on copyright than patents, though. A patent on something like Roundup-resistant seeds lasts twenty years. A copyright can last well over a hundred years.
If the artificial gene insert was designed so that it doesn't propogate to the next generation (which is theoretically possible), would you consider this more fair? That is to say, Monsanto wouldn't have to impose any 'artificial rules' because their plant crops are designed to last a single generation.
