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posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-your-5-a-day dept.

Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space.

For nearly 20 years, Morton's work was limited only by his imagination and by how many different kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on. But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more and more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding. The patents weren't just for different types of lettuce, but specific traits such as resistance to a disease, a particular shade of red or green, or curliness of the leaf.

Such patents have increased in the years since, and are encroaching on a growing range of crops, from corn to carrots — a trend that has plant breeders, environmentalists and food security experts concerned about the future of the food production.

https://ensia.com/features/open-source-seeds/


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:57AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:57AM (#446911)

    Patent a plant? WTF? Software patents shouldn't be allowed. Business model patents should not be allowed. Plant patents should not be allowed.

    What was that story a few days ago where IBM got something like 7,000 patents this year? There shouldn't be 7,000 patents total in a single year, let alone by a single company.

    The patent office needs to be cleaned top to bottom and entirely replaced with people who have a clue as to what is an important invention as opposed to what is lawyer fodder.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Insightful=3, Total=3
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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:32AM (#446916)

    The patent office needs to be cleaned top to bottom and entirely replaced with people who have a clue

    Benoit Battistelli, President of the European Patent Office, is such a total asshole that many talented folks have bailed out of the EPO.
    So, they got the opposite there--at least in the short term.

    With national governments becoming very angry at his antics, it is unlikely that Battistelli will survive 2017 there, perhaps not even keeping that job through January.
    The question is "What happens after that?"

    For more than a year, this story has been the main focus of Roy Schestowitz and his crew at TechRights.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jelizondo on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:10AM

    by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:10AM (#446992) Journal

    You voted for Trump so no cleaning of the Patent Office!

    I'll grant you that HRC would had not cleaned the PO but then we have let the parties (?) decide what candidates get to the actual voting season, so we are at fault here, all of us. (? The big donors to the parties is perhaps more accurate?)

    In a rational society, no mathematical formulae (including software) and no gene should be granted a patent: it is a discovery not an invention. Imagine Columbus getting a patent on America!

    And no, I'm not trolling you, but perhaps I will earn another 'flamebait' moderation to end the year : -)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:15PM (#447182)

      What little Jill Stein has said about patents leans in the direction of protectionism/anti-piracy.

      In this interview, she chastises universities for making getting patents a top priority.
      A conversation with Jill Stein: what the Green Party candidate believes [vox.com]

      This site attempts to put words in her mouth.
      (They use the same verbiage for other Liberal folks.)
      I side with Jill Stein on healthcare issues [google.com]

      Given her other positions as well as her decades as a physician who prescribed drugs, I find it difficult to believe that she would have been worse on this issue than the Red or Blue nominee.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]