I'm sure you've heard the fights in the news. Apple got a patent on rectangular smartphones with a touchscreen and rounded corners. Amazon got a broad patent on scheduled home delivery of perishable goods (think the milkman). It's illegal to play most DVDs on a linux computer. You can buy a movie, but can't change its format or edit it for your own use. You know what I'm talking about.
There have always been frivolous lawsuits; recently there was a girl who sued her grad-school for a C+. People can be stupid and greedy, but when a company does it, it's something else. It can be destructive to competition, innovation, and small business. Capitalism falls apart and destroys the market when people get out of hand with lawsuits and corporate greed. Let me give you an example:
I'm going to tell you about Monsanto Chemical Company. You may not know the name, but they have been in your life. Some of the plastic you come in contact with was made by them, maybe even parts of the device you are using right now. Had something with wheat, corn, or another crop in it lately? The crops were very likely grown from Monsanto seeds, fertilized with Monsanto fertilizer, and sprayed with Monsanto insecticide and weed inhibitors. They make RoundUp and grass seed for your lawn. This is one big company. Like any big company they attract a lot of hate. In this case, it's not all unwarranted.
Monsanto has copyrights on living things and is using that to control most American farmers. Remember how I said they sell seeds? Now, in some ways it makes sense to copyright that. If you spent millions to genetically engineer a corn seed to grow fast and strong with hardly any water in a record time, you'd want to make your money back. You wouldn't want someone to make their own copy of your product that you worked so hard on and sell it. But Monsanto is not just protecting themselves.
As soon as genetic engineering was invented and the gene sequence copyright created, Monsanto started copyrighting and patenting seeds. Not just what they made, either. They would find strains of seeds and if they could (they usually could), they would make it their property. There are certain sequences in DNA that are owned by Monsanto that used to be used by farmers for hundreds of years. Farmers would save some seed each year to re-plant next year. Now you either need to buy a license to grow your own seed (only the big farms can afford that) or buy new seed every year. Even if you get the license to grow crops from saved seeds, you'd need special chemicals to germinate many of them. They are not like natural seeds. All this cuts into profit big time. Every year they have to pay Monsanto (but the gains of using super-crop can help offset this cost).
There are still open pollinated crops: non GMO seeds that are in the public domain. Some of these are strains that are hundreds to thousands of old. If you have one of these, in theory you should be safe... in theory. Some of these have had their DNA copyrighted by Monsanto, either by accident or design. There is another issue as well.
Let's pretend that you are a farmer. You grow millet, just like all your neighbors. Some of your neighbors sell out to a Monsanto super farm. One day, out of the blue, you get a summons to court for copyright infringement. They not only want you to pay millions in fines, but back pay for 10 years of crops! You have no idea how it's possible as you have always used your saved seed stock, direct descendants from seed your great grandfather bought. You've never used Monsanto crops, but your neighbors did. There are several ways your crops might have been marked with genetic markers:
There have always been frivolous lawsuits; recently there was a girl who sued her grad-school for a C+. People can be stupid and greedy, but when a company does it, it's something else. It can be destructive to competition, innovation, and small business. Capitalism falls apart and destroys the market when people get out of hand with lawsuits and corporate greed. Let me give you an example:
I'm going to tell you about Monsanto Chemical Company. You may not know the name, but they have been in your life. Some of the plastic you come in contact with was made by them, maybe even parts of the device you are using right now. Had something with wheat, corn, or another crop in it lately? The crops were very likely grown from Monsanto seeds, fertilized with Monsanto fertilizer, and sprayed with Monsanto insecticide and weed inhibitors. They make RoundUp and grass seed for your lawn. This is one big company. Like any big company they attract a lot of hate. In this case, it's not all unwarranted.
Monsanto has copyrights on living things and is using that to control most American farmers. Remember how I said they sell seeds? Now, in some ways it makes sense to copyright that. If you spent millions to genetically engineer a corn seed to grow fast and strong with hardly any water in a record time, you'd want to make your money back. You wouldn't want someone to make their own copy of your product that you worked so hard on and sell it. But Monsanto is not just protecting themselves.
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| There are a lot of opinions about GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) crops, and I'm about to afflict you with mine. I believe careful responsible gene manipulation to be beneficial. As long as we are careful not to create a monoculture or an invasive hybrid, it's fine with me. Many are more healthy and nutritious, use less water and fertilizer, and can't be grown accidentally. High-yield crops grown on little land is better for the environment too. |
There are still open pollinated crops: non GMO seeds that are in the public domain. Some of these are strains that are hundreds to thousands of old. If you have one of these, in theory you should be safe... in theory. Some of these have had their DNA copyrighted by Monsanto, either by accident or design. There is another issue as well.
Let's pretend that you are a farmer. You grow millet, just like all your neighbors. Some of your neighbors sell out to a Monsanto super farm. One day, out of the blue, you get a summons to court for copyright infringement. They not only want you to pay millions in fines, but back pay for 10 years of crops! You have no idea how it's possible as you have always used your saved seed stock, direct descendants from seed your great grandfather bought. You've never used Monsanto crops, but your neighbors did. There are several ways your crops might have been marked with genetic markers:
- Cross Pollination: Bees can travel miles with pollen on their legs. Any field within 5 miles of yours is a risk.
- Birds: A bird might eat a seed from another field and poop over yours.
- Wind/Shipping Spillage: Strong wind may move seed or trucks may lose seed while passing your farm.
- Erosion: Water might carry seed from one field to another.
This is not a random example; it's a true story.
The industry as a whole is becoming a battle-ground of lawsuits. The difficulty of entry into the markets is now also measured in the capital needed to survive an onslaught of lawsuits. Economies of scale dictate that big companies are more durable in a war of legal attrition. If some small firm wanted to sell new smartphones, they'd need to weather lawsuits from LG, Samsung, Apple and HTC. They don't need to win, just starve you. Innovation is stifled by this.
Luckily there is a counter-movement. It all started with a frustrated MIT student named Richard Stallman.
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| Richard Stallman is almost considered a god by many programmers. He has been responsible for some of the greatest changes in software in the last century, and for starting a movement that changed the world forever. Good beard too. |
He was a computer programmer in the early days - a real pioneer. In those days they would change programs to suit their needs. Suddenly companies started making it impossible to access the source code, mostly to protect their intellectual property, but this meant that sometimes without modification the software would be unusable. If you used somebody else's code, even a friend's, you could be sued. He had a flash of inspiration. What if you had user-driven software creation? A community developing software for everyone can make a powerful and constantly up-dated tool. Being free, it could dodge some industry pit-falls. With help, he created the GNU license, a brilliant piece of legal gobbledy-gook that protects the producers, users, and modifiers of any free product. It spread like mad.
Have you ever used Mozilla Firefox, Linux, Android OS or Netscape? GNU. There is a staggering amount of free programs on the internet, everything from smartphone apps to software to run UAVs and industrial robots. The model of the system spread to non-product related fields. Wikipedia is free. It's even leaking into the physical world.
3D printing looks like the next revolution. A 3D printer takes a computer file and turns it into a three dimensional physical object, usually in plastic, but metal and ceramics are starting to appear too. A file with a cup will produce a plastic cup. A 3D picture of your head will make a small bust of you in plastic. Free drawings are available all over the internet. An astonishing 70% of a 3D printer can be made in a 3D printer. Self replicating machines. Welcome to the future.
Many of the great advances and innovations started as a free product. Innovation flourishes where there is little chance of lawsuit. For the sake of our country and our world, I hope that the big guys lighten up. Play nice and let's get better together.
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