And here I thought the guaranteed monopoly period of a patent -- in order to recover development costs -- was the business' reward for public disclosure of the technology.

Should there be any limits to patents? If not, why not? Because the US government has said so? And that's enforced by privately negotiated treaty with other countries, without the consent of their citizens?

I'd be worried if I didn't think I'd be able to drop seeds into a PCR machine in ~10 years, and dump their genome online in a matter of hours. I'm not worried.

> Because the US government has said so?

Sigh... Law is a social construct. It was decided that it is in the public interest to provide periods of exclusivity in exchange for public disclosure, because afterwards the public can make free use of the information. Otherwise, everything would be trade secrets, and everything would have to be reverse engineered. Things like generic drugs probably wouldn't exist -- if Coke can protect a recipe for 70 years, I doubt the drug companies would have much issue doing the same. And I'm sure there's plenty of technology that strategically stays out of patent space, because it's more valuable without public disclosure.

> And that's enforced by privately negotiated treaty with other countries, without the consent of their citizens?

Are you implying that all law must be ratified by every citizen before being enacted? Because otherwise, your voting for your representatives was your consent.

Sigh? Sigh. You do realize that while law is a social construct, representatives are under no obligation to enact the will of the people, right? And Congress has notoriously low approval ratings? And that only when shamed into taking action they do so? Right.

> Are you implying that all law must be ratified by every citizen before being enacted?

No. I'm implying that government representatives outside the US are voting in favor of laws that are in direct opposition of their citizens' interests (you've heard of the TPP? Of course you have), and that in most cases there is no short-term recourse (short of protests and bloodshed).

Enter stage right "civil disobedience" and the ignoring of copyright law worldwide through online distribution of media. Its already starting to happen with 3D scanning/printing, and will eventually happen with genetic information (including patented seeds).

This is a nitpick, but Coke has many different flavor compounds that are part of the formula, while most medicines contain a single active molecule.

A widespread arms race of decoys and analytical countermeasures is still bad, of course.

Argentina has a democratically elected government. How can you say that the government's treaty agreements were made without the consent of their citizens?

The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users.

If you're going to generalize patents and copyrights as just "a business having costs" then you're grossly oversimplifying it.

> The USPTO exists to protect investments into intellectual property and help ensure economic costs of development are distributed amongst it's users

It could also be looked at, "The USPTO, and Congress, have allowed patent and copyright holders the ability to rent seek far beyond what was ever intended when the USPTO, copyright, and patents were first conceived."

That's why the roundup ready tech patent expired in 2015. IP creators are given a set timeframe to recooperate costs.

You can now replant your roundup ready seeds, toomuchtodo, as much as you want.

A few patents down, 4k-6k more to go.

>Or I wait long enough for an intelligent majority of Congress to invalidate the ability to patent or copyright seeds.

Good luck with that, considering the constitution grants Congress the power to promote scientific progress through granting limited exclusive rights to authors. I doubt they will find invalidating seed patents aligned with promoting scientific progress.

Edit: nice redaction

Tech always wins in the end, and all old men die eventually.

That argument hinges more on copyright than patents, though. A patent on something like Roundup-resistant seeds lasts twenty years. A copyright can last well over a hundred years.

If the artificial gene insert was designed so that it doesn't propogate to the next generation (which is theoretically possible), would you consider this more fair? That is to say, Monsanto wouldn't have to impose any 'artificial rules' because their plant crops are designed to last a single generation.

This has been done by breeders for years; no need for any "biotech" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid

Interesting question. To be honest, I'm not sure, but I'll be considering it this evening over a beer.