Description

In the revolutionary 1980 case, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the U.S. Supreme Court held that human-made microorganisms are patentable subject matter under the 1952 Patent Act. This ruling, while extremely controversial at the time, has taken on new levels of significance today that go beyond the ethics of patenting life. While earlier statutes enumerated use exceptions for monopolies over seed – with reference to farming and research – under Chakrabarty there exists no such provisions. The resulting strengthening of intellectual property rights has spurred investment in biotechnology research and, for the first time, brought major corporations into the realm of American agriculture. With a scarcity of conventional seed on the market and legal monopoly of corporations over genetically modified varieties, farmers find themselves in a difficult place. Increasingly, they face lawsuits for patent infringement they did not intend, either because they misread the “Technology Use Agreement” – which forbids farmers from saving seed for the following harvest in the age-old method of farming – or because of the inevitable forces of genetic drift. The outcomes of these lawsuits are typically devastating, but farmers are not the only ones that stand to lose from this abusive monopoly.