There have been hundreds of lawsuits by Monsanto. I don't immediately recognise which case you're talking about. Do you have any links please?
> GMO IP protection does nothing to prevent farmers from continuing to grow previously existing varieties.
If they buy seed from grain elevator which comingles GMO and non-GMO seed (which is what happened in the Bowman case) the farmer can't sell what they've grown from that seed.
Here's the case I was thinking of (it was canola, not soybeans):
https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/38991...
As for Bowman
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf
Bowman didn't just do that. He applied glyphosate to the field. So, he bought seeds without a license to grow them, with the intent to exploit the fact they were resistant to glyphosate. This violated the patent.
I don’t think you’re engaging with me in good faith here. I’m making my own case, and clearly; I’m not trying to make an underhanded other point.
I’ll tap out here. Have a nice day.
What Monsanto DID do was sue someone whose field was contaminated, and who then repeatedly sprayed the field with glyphosate to kill all but the GMO plants, so he could selectively concentrate the interlopers to continue to propagate. It's this last step that got the farmer in trouble.
> but things get very bad if people don’t have food
GMO IP protection does nothing to prevent farmers from continuing to grow previously existing varieties. So this is another scare argument without foundation.
> I think your argument is sound in a free-market maximalist / small-government libertarian framework, I’m just less convinced that the current IP framework produces good results in this case.
I think the anti-IP argument is an underhanded way to try to ban GMOs without actually saying you want to do that.