US patent for common Mexican bean revoked
He selectively bred them for a few years and claimed to have invented "a new field bean variety that produces distinctly colored yellow seed which remains relatively unchanged by season." He called it the "Enola bean," and was granted a "20-year patent that covered any beans and hybrids derived from crosses with even one of his seeds."
His claim of 60 cents per pound of beans sold in the US "caused a steep decline in exports of such beans from Mexico to the USA, according to Mexican government sources."
Today, the United States Patent and Trademark Office revoked Proctor's patent claims
Link
The bean was erroneously granted patent protection in 1999, as US Patent Number 5,894,079, in a move that raised profound concerns about biopiracy and the potential abuse of intellectual property (IP) claims on plant materials that originate in the developing world and remain as important dietary staples, particularly among the poor.
CIAT was able to dispute the inventor's claims to a unique color by providing published evidence of 260 yellow beans among the almost 28,000 samples of Phaseolus in its crop "genebank." At least six of the CIAT varieties were, to most observers, identical to the bean described in Proctor's patent documents on the basis of color and genetic markers. CIAT also put forward publications to show that the claims in the patent application took credit for research already widely available in scientific literature and thus claims made regarding the breeding of the bean in his patent also failed to meet the patent office's statutory requirements for "non-obviousness and novelty."
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That sounds like about the most evil person on Earth.
sort of like Monsanto contained in one body
"I said there was a Society of Men among us, bred up from their Youth in the Art of proving by Words multiplied for the Pleasure, that White is Black, and Black is White, according as they are paid. To this Society all the rest of the People are Slaves.
For Example, if my Neighbour hath a Mind to my Cow, he hires a Lawyer to prove that he ought to have my Cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my Right, it being against all Rules of Law that any Man should be allowed to speak for himself. Now in this Case, I who am the right Owner lie under two great Disadvantages. First, my Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falshood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will. The second Disadvantage is, that my Lawyer must proceed with great Caution: Or else he will be reprimanded by the Judges, and abhorred by his Brethren, as one that would lessen the Practice of the Law."
Does this mean we can send Proctor to Mexico?
Also, Proctor & Gamble should totally sue his ass for stealing half of their name...
If this had been ADM, Monsanto et. al. who could field a platoon of lawyers, the patent would still be in force.
eat enough of these to prevent spectral rape. the more you know...
TAKUAN, your comment "gives me a pain in me gulliver."
Uhum: and the apparently totally incompetent US Patent office, which did not figure out the patent violation at the time of granting that patent (though it's their taks to check that), is out of the responsibility?
Who pays now for the losses of Mexican farmers who could nt sell their beans?
Another evidence of how greed in First-World-countries destroys the very well being of 2nd/3rd-World countries through patent/copyright/piracy laws.
"I had hitherto seen only one side of the Academy, the other being appropriated to the Advancers of speculative Learning, of which I shall say something when I have Mentioned one illustrious Person more, who is called among them the universal Artist. He told us he had been thirty Years employing his Thoughts for the Improvement of human Life. He had two large Rooms full of wonderful Curiosities, and fifty Men at work. Some were condensing Air into a dry tangible Substance, by extracting the Nitre, and letting the Aqueous or fluid Particles percolate; others softening Marble for Pillows and Pincushions; others petrifying the Hoofs of a living Horse to preserve them from foundring. The Artist himself was at that time busy upon two great Designs; the first, to sow Land with Chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal Virtue to be contained, as he Demonstrated by several Experiments which I was not skilful enough to comprehend. The other was, by a certain Composition of Gums, Minerals, and Vegetables outwardly applied, to prevent the Growth of Wool upon two young Lambs; and he hoped in a reasonable Time to propagate the Breed of naked Sheep all over the Kingdom."
which did not figure out the patent violation at the time of granting that patent
I gather that in the last few decades, most patents are bogus. Some are spurious, others have already been patented, some are squatters. They just rubber stamp them to get the fee. And government departments and officials are commonly immune to legal action.
Hrmmm, "Patents are Evil".
Wow, what's next?
"Water is Wet!"
"Grass is Green!"
"Winter is Cold!!!"
*yawn*
Film at eleven is I believe the next traditional statement I'm supposed to make.
-abs
"Encouraging innovation my ass."
I can't believe I'm the first one to say this, but…
We finally have incontrovertible proof that the patent office…just doesn't know beans.
@Robotech_Master
Oooooh. BOOOOOO!!!!!!
*throws rotten tomatoes and other vegetables in the only time-honored way of expressing the horror at a bad pun that he can think of*
-abs
If someone lies, it's rather difficult for the patent office to detect it. But that guy obviously committed fraud on the Patent Office. And part of filing a patent is signing a declaration that you are the inventor. I hope someone sues the bastard for lying on that declaration.
I don't blame the Patent Office for this one, to be honest. If someone is willing to perjure themselves, it's difficult to avoid error.
I'm going to patent the concept of both creationism and evolution and sue anything that is either formed spontaneously or evolves.
The only person I won't be able to sue is Ben Stein.
Patent examiners get paid on approval of patents. That's incentive to approve.
plus it's faster to improve than to investigate, and with the million-patent backlog, that's even more incentive to approve.
I blame the patent office, but I also blame its being totally understaffed and under-funded, and also the expansion of patent applicability to new things and processes which increases the backlog and the expertise required.
So there's no intelligent design but unfounded patent.
So there's no intelligent design but unfounded patent.
Patent examiners get paid on approval of patents.
That's like paying doctors not to diagnose illnesses. Oh, wait, that's exactly how paid healthcare works.
What a pig.
He should have called it the Ebola bean.
oh, c'mon! how could someone patent a 'magical' fruit?!?
Did he make any money from his $.60/lb of beans?
just enough to starve a few dozen families
If I am declared Emperor, I will establish a new policy by which the patent application for living material (plant or animal) will include a mandatory fifty-year stay in Guantanamo. Step One.
My patent on Mexican Beanies (small sombreros with propellers) was revoked on similar grounds. Well, not very similar.
So who is the bigger fool? This avaricious twerp or the bastards who set up the patent system in the first place?
those who tolerate it
This avaricious twerp or the bastards who set up the patent system in the first place?
The system is honor based. If you want the patent office to research claims, expect to pay $10,000 for a patent application. Then only the rich can patent things.
It's horrible, but I'm not surprised. I expect more cases. You mean, rich people/countries benefitting off poor people/countries? Who wulda thunk it?
I bet if some Mexican came and said hey that looks exactly like the beans from my village he or she would have been ignored.
I fully support your campaign to invalidate this patent, and therefore
I have a couple of suggestions for how to write about this and
other issues concerning plant variety patents.
One issue is to avoid the term "intellectual property". Describing
patents as "intellectual property" does not illuminate them; on the
contrary, it spreads confusion, because it conflates patents with
other unrelated legal practices (including copyrights and trademarks)
which work in a totally different way. For the sake of clear thinking
about any of these laws, we need first of all to teach people not
to generalize about more than one of them at a time.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation
of why this term should never be used.
In this article, avoiding the term would have been easy. I find it is
never very difficult. Since I learned to recognize it as a misleading
overgeneralization, I do not group these laws together in my mind, so
I never have an occasion to wish for a term to talk about them all at
once. If I have a reason to mention an organization, activity or
publication that has "intellectual property" in its name, I briefly
identify that term as propaganda and make a link to the explanation.
The article uses another propaganda term of our adversaries:
"protection". To speak of "protection" for something, such as a plant
variety, implies preventing it from being destroyed or damaged. To
speak of a government-imposed monopoly as "protection" in effect says
that wider planting of it would destroy or damage it. That falsehood
serves people like Mr Proctor, especially when its implications are
not analyzed.
Resisting propaganda is a long-term issue, and it may be irrelevant to
winning any one case. However, these terms affect the way people
frame their thought, and in the long term nothing is more influential
than that. We have to work at the long-term level as well as the
short-term, so would you please join me in rejecting these propaganda
terms?
I also noted this statement, which is subtly ambiguous:
"We understand that individuals and companies have a right to patent
what are clearly novel agriculture innovations," said Hawtin.
If we interpret "have a right" as making a statement about current law
in many countries, this statement is accurate. But the same statement
can be read, equally well, as a political statement about justice,
endorsing the system of plant patents. That statement is
controversial; many farmers consider that system oppressive even when
applied to varieties that are new, since it denies them their
traditional freedom to save and trade their seeds. Is it your
intention to take a stand in support of that system?
Just as a point of information, CIAT is actually based in Colombia. It's mission is to use science in the field of agriculture to benefit the poor. They get reasonably decent funding for this research (my MSc supervisor post-doced there before supervising me), which tends to give me a small ray of hope for the world at large.
It's a nice example of Central/Latin American solidarity.
Of course, yes, if some Mexican/Colombian/Central American in general came and said "those beans look like the ones in my village", they would (sadly) be ignore. This is where big organisations like this come into play, collecting data from many farmers and trying to do right by them.
You do realize that all the quotes that you're addressing are from other sources, not from Mark?
Hush, I like it when Richard Stallman rants.