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Re:Corn Wars by acqq on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @02:25AM (#10083954)
> he guy knowingly used seeds that weren't his

If they had been cross-pollinated (and nobody proved otherwise) the seeds had been his all the time. If you'd do DNA sequencing of such seeds you'd see a different DNA from the Monsanto seeds. But Monsanto claimed that as soon as the seeds produce plant resistant to their herbicide he has no right to use his own seeds.

The software analogy were, the computer virus infests your document files because you surf the same sites as your neighbors who pay "Monsanto protection." The infected files contained only the text you wrote, after running the Monsanto scanner only the infected files remain on your disk, all others are deleted. You can't preserve, copy or edit the infected files anymore because Monsanto, which produced the virus, has a copyright on avoiding Monsanto virus scanner, so as soon as the files aren't deleted by the Monsanto scanner you can't keep your own files.

Re:Corn Wars by vectorjohn on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @02:44PM (#10087579)
If a software analogy is what you want, it's like he used some third party library which requires a license to make new software, but didn't pay for the license. Sure, the code is new and unique and his, but it contains the code that is patented.

Doing it by mistake is one thing. But he clearly did it on purpose and was trying to win in court to get away with it.

Re:Corn Wars by sampo on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @06:42AM (#10084636)
The advantageous property in the seeds he developed, originated from the cross-pollination. He just purified the Monsanto-originated genes into a usable strain.