What's special about seeds is they reproduce with a bit of water, soil, and sunlight. My laptop does not and in fact will be very sad if I water it. Thus no matter how many patents Intel has on the things inside my laptop, there's a limit on how much I can ultimately do with the physical device.
Wouldn't this actually be an argument in favor of seed patents? I've been more or less a complete IP abolitionist for so long now that thinking in IP maxi terms is basically a foreign language to me now, but wouldn't they make the argument that it's necessary to allow protections where the good is A. hard to develop initially and B. easy to reproduce?
Nothing you can do with water, soil, and sunlight is going to produce RoundUp --- or a RoundUp-Ready seed.
It's perfectly reasonable to oppose all patents. Just don't pretend the wind, sun, and dirt somehow invalidate seed patents. There's no distinction to draw.
That's a whopper of a non sequitur. I was asking about the specific patent on these potatoes. Our ancestors have been growing this specific patented version of potatoes for thousands of years? Really?
No, they have been cross pollinating parents with desirable traits to produce an offspring with more desirable traits. The same thing Pepsi did to make FC5 potato.
Read it carefully because while the patent claims that it also would apply if transgenic modifications are added, the variety was developed through just classic breeding techniques, which are described in the patent in case you aren’t familiar.
And it's fine to patent specific (and novel) varieties of potato. The patent just applies to that specific variety, not to the general concept of improving potatoes. It's irrelevant that other specific varieties may have been bred for millenia.
