There is a big difference between a farmer who may have some Monsanto crops on the fringes of his fields, and a guy whose entire crop is Monsanto (but who trying to claim it's "just from stray pollination").
Is there? It seems like Monsanto really doesn't care one way or the other; as far as they're concerned, the seed police return a positive hit, it's time to mobilize the lawyer brigade and litigate someone out of existence.
This is a big problem with the legal system in my opinion. These huge corporations can use their considerable wealth to basically destroy anyone with the temerity to not immediately fold on just the threat of litigation. Sure, there can be a judgement for damages and the cost of the defense down the road (years down the road in most cases) but these aren't criminal cases, these are civil matters, so the burden of retaining representation is wholly on John Q. Farmer. How the hell can a regular Joe compete in the courtroom against these large corporations? Simply finding a lawyer that is willing to take the case is difficult a lot of the time because they know how hard it is going to be to fight these goliaths with their in-house legal staff. This creates an enormous chilling effect where a lot of lawsuits aren't even really fought, not because the case didn't have merit, but because they couldn't afford to make it in the first place.
I don't know how we solve that problem, but it needs solving. Our justice system is already ridiculously skewed towards the benefit of the wealthy, shit like this just tips the balance that much more.
So does the license agreement Monsanto must make people agree to require users to forfeit their right to sue and settle for arbitration like all the software companies are doing now? If not, I bet it's coming. That will solve their lawsuit problem once and for all.
America! Fuck Yeah!
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