As a farmer with experience growing roundup-ready crops: In order to obtain roundup-ready seeds you have to sign a contract with the vender. In said agreement, you agree to not do such things.

If you want to do whatever you want with your field, don't enter into contractual agreements where you agree to follow certain rules.

> As a farmer with experience growing roundup-ready crops: In order to obtain roundup-ready seeds you have to sign a contract with the vender. In said agreement, you agree to not do such things.

The farmer had not entered into any contract with anyone, that is the point. It's not his fault if pollen from his neighbor's field entered his field, even if they contained "patented" technology.

If you are referring to a case where litigation was executed under the terms of patent contract, the farmer – being a member of the public who grants such patents – has still entered into a contract by virtue of choosing to be a member of the public who has agreed that patent contracts are desirable to issue. The public had no obligation to issue the patent, but chose to. The farmer need not be a member of that public, but chose to be.

How would one choose not to be a member of that public?

The farmer is under no moral obligation to care that the uniformed public wants. It only matters to pretend to live in a democracy.

Then, without a license, he had no right to exploit the patented technology. The farmer acted in a way that showed a knowing and deliberate exploitation of the patented technology. There seems to be a disconnect here, but I'm not seeing it. Can you help me with what I've missed?

You need a license to produce and sell patented technology.

You don’t need a license to use patented technology which you either bought from a third party, was given or has blown onto your land by the wind.

This thread is going in circles. As mentioned a few comments ago, it's clearly not the case that the technology "blown onto your land by the wind". The farmer was intentionally engaging in artificial selection to get plants with roundup ready traits. I can be sympathetic to the claim that a patented program magically appeared on your computer because of random bit-flips, but I can't be sympathetic if you deliberately set up a system to generate bit-flips on your computer in a specific way so as to produce the desired program.

And note that this farmer would not have successfully obtained glyphosate resistant plants just by spraying his field, in the absence of the contamination. If it were that easy, GMOs wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

In the case being discussed, the neighboring farmer had not signed any agreement with the vendor.

Then he acted in a way that made it clear he was using the patented materials without a license. Specifically, spraying his fields with Round-up that would have killed everything that was not patented.

You can shrug and say "Oh, it was clearly an accident, Monsanto is evil". And Monsanto is certainly evil. It's just reasonably clear why the judge would view this behavior as deliberate and knowing infringement of a patent.

The original statement was as followed:

"I should be able to do whatever the fuck I want on my field as long as I don't use pesticides or processing that has been banned by law"

And then someone responded to this by saying that someone signed a contract.

And then you responded by going off about something that is refuted by the original statement.

So, you need to agree that the original response about a contract was wrong, and also that your new statement is irrelevant.

Yes, the original statement was overly narrow in its view of patents and contracts. Not only should you not enter into contracts that restrict how you can treat your fields, you should also not deliberately act in a way designed to infringe the rights of others if you want to be free to do as you please within the law without incurring liability.

For example, you should not deliberately cultivate a patented plant for which you lack a license from your neighbor's plot of land and then treat it in a way that only makes sense if you're doing that. That will incur liability when a judge notices you are trying to dodge licensing. To put it another way, using processing banned under law.

We shouldn't enforce absurd patents like that in the first place. What's the worst that happens? Some old people starve because their retirement investments tank?

The farmer did enter into an agreement when he purchased Roundup.

Yup. That’s what the other comment said…

So why did you imply he had signed a contract?

He did something that only made sense if it were deliberate and intentional violation of the patent. Intent matters.