Incorrect. Monsanto seed did NOT drift onto Bowman's land without his knowledge or consent. Thus far, no such case has been litigated where seed drift or cross-pollination has occurred. Obviously that is a very big question that will come out of this ruling, should the court find for Monsanto, as it will arguably put the onus of burden on farmers to test for and destroy infringing crops caused by cross pollination. That issue, however, is not in debate here.

Bowman realized that a staggering percentage of soybean seeds on the commodity market were Roundup-Ready GM seeds. Normally a farmer has to sign a contract that he will not replant any additional seeds and will buy future generations of seeds from Monsanto. Replanting seeds for these farmers has not been considered a patent infringement but instead a contract violation. The patent infringement idea was unprecedented until this case. Bowman, who had not signed a Monsanto contract, simply decided to buy contract-free seeds on the commodity market, as Monsanto-contracted growers can sell the seeds they are not allowed to replant for general purposes such as food production. Bowman had the novel idea to take these seeds and plant them, spray the seeds with Roundup (thus killing off all the non-Roundup-Ready seeds), and have contract-free Roundup-ready seeds that he could replant at will. Monsanto, which monitors the purchase of Roundup to Roundup-ready seeds under contract, determined Bowman had purchased enough Roundup to be running an un-contracted operation. Unable to ping him on the contract issue, they requested him to stop. He refused, and they sued under the patent infringement theory.

The question that will be debated here is whether or not subsequent generations of Roundup-Ready crops, by the act of growing them, independently constitute patent infringement. Normally for infringement to occur there has to be some performative action. Monsanto is arguing (and the lower court agreed) that the performative act of planting the seeds in the first place is sufficient to transfer infringement to subsequent generations, and therefore the plants can essentially infringe upon each new growth without Bowman's performative action on subsequent growings.

It may seem pretty dumb, but it has the potential to majorly impact the food industry. If the court finds for Monsanto, the "auto-infringing crop" theory would make accidental infringers of any farmer who encountered cross-pollination or seed drift. Although no such cross-pollination has been successfully argued -- in all cases where farmers have brought this defense, it has been very well proven that they were lying through their teeth and had planted Monsanto crops in violation of their contract. Conversely, if the court finds for Bowman, this would in effect nullify Monsanto's patent protection on their seeds, as no farmer would buy from the developer, bound to a contract, where they could just go out and buy commodity seed at a fraction of the cost.

I've researched GMO patent intensively, written articles, and have followed the case for a while now. I think the one constant among GMO patent cases is that both sides -- Monsanto and farmers alike -- have done nothing but provide a tremendous amount of misinformation about the other side. No party line can be trusted. Monsanto argues that they're just trying to make a living and don't gouge anyone, being a humble food producer. Farmers argue that they're being put upon by the big corporate food monopoly and haven't done anything inappropriate other than try to grow organic foods. Both sides are lying and are trying to wage war to maximize their profits. Being as rabidly anti-DRM as we are, I suppose Slashdot readers will support the farmers. Either way, this issue is pretty big for determining whether the judiciary is embracing the pendulum swinging back to more restrictive patents or is continuing the trend of expansive patent protections.

Also worth noting, Monsanto's patents on Roundup-Ready soybeans are set to expire in the next few years, IIRC. The question is going to be entirely academic and legal and will likely have no effect on Roundup-ready crops at all after the patent expires.

1) It's not my argument but many legal scholars' that I've seen in law review articles, and I don't assume it's a very good argument. This is just the most persuasive argument I've seen where deterrence has been refuted.

2) I'd expect there to be a lurking variable that accounts for lower murder rates in other Western countries. The U.S.'s higher rates of violence I suspect are a sociological and cultural function, not a function of the U.S. court system. That said, I think the statistics exist independent of the justice system enacted, and that higher rates generally do not necessarily correlate with whether the abolition or instatement of a death penalty will affect deviation from those rates. Said more simply, just because the U.S. has higher murder rates comparatively does not necessarily mean that the abolition of the death penalty will lower (or raise) murder rates. There is evidence both ways, although personally I find little practical use for the death penalty. I just recognize that the majority of other people I know are much more prone to say, "Kill the f*cker" and mean it when the justice system doesn't grant them the penalty they want imposed.

The death penalty is imposed for retributive punishment. Terrible as that may seem, it's purpose is to satiate the vengeance of the victim or victim's loved ones and prevent them from taking justice into their own hands. Although we may not like the retributive part of humanity, it nevertheless exists, and the death penalty exists to curb that appetite and minimize the amount of vendetta justice.

A few years ago I was saying the exact same thing, and I still have major reservations about homeopathic medicine, but I will be damned if I don't have first-hand experience of acupuncture therapy actually working.

My cat had been hit by a car when she was chasing a squirrel across the road. Fortunately, the car tire only caught the very tail end of her (quite literally her tail and the vertebrae that connect it to hips). She survived, thankfully, due to us being there to take her to the emergency vet, but for a year her tail was completely and totally paralyzed. It was long and it would drag behind her, much to her irritation, and you could touch it and she would never notice. There was no measurable nerve function at all, and she stayed this way for the better part of twelve months.

One of the vets techs at the clinic had been studying animal acupuncture in addition to her clinical rotations, which I thought was the most laughable thing in the world. But she was sweet and didn't like seeing our cat grumpy about tripping over her tail all the time, so she offered, along with the permissive curiosity of our vet, to perform acupuncture therapy sessions on her tail free of charge, just to see if anything would happen at all. Assured of zero risk to any further damage, and because I was curious and try to give anything its fair shot, we agreed.

Two months later, my cat could not only lift her tail, she could swish and flick it with the same mobility she had prior to its injury. It was a recovery so amazingly rapid that I cannot scientifically attribute it to coincidence, especially considering the deterioration that had occurred in the twelve months prior. I'm still flabbergasted. My dad, who has since started massage therapy school and studies a combination of Western and Eastern healing techniques, basically summarized it best: "Each side has their own ideas, and each method maybe has its merits, but neither side has a complete picture. I can't say that energy channeling is as effective as pharmaceutical remedies, but then I can't say that pharmaceutical solutions are the only right solution, either. There's more to us than chemicals, and there's more to us than harmonic healing crystals. Both perspectives are wrong in that they think they have a complete picture, and while I don't have a good answer as to what is a complete picture, I sometimes wonder if that's not the point."

My dad had been prescribed Oxycontin following a painful surgery but had to dispose of his medication when he found himself starting to get addicted. He had asked about breaking the pills apart so as to take smaller doses, and the doctor blanched. Apparently the time-release portion of Oxycontin has to do with a coating of the pill that takes longer for your stomach acid to digest. If you chew it up or break it apart, the slow-fuse release no longer works, and you metabolize it all at once. Apparently this is one of the leading causes of overdose on Oxycontin.

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of username and password . Usernames and passwords passed in plain-text are de minimis security. At best, at least under United States law (I'm not sure how Dutch law treats IP) the information may be classified as a trade secret. But copyright infringement has not occurred because direct copyright infringement requires actual copying.

This would be a perfect example of security by obscurity. A poster argues above that the same argument can apply to the configuration of key bumps, so that this can't really be called security by obscurity , but in actuality all that StO comprises is security where an attacker's knowledge of the vector alone will constitute access. In the case of a key, the attacker must have 1) the knowledge of the key configuration, and 2) a blank key with a method to cut that key. SbO is hiding a key under a rock; knowledge of the location alone is all that is needed to compromise the security portal, and no other device is required other than the vector. I'd say it would be presumptive to say "we all agree" that information such as that should be confidential, since, to some degree, it requires a "looking the other way" and 3rd party nondisclosure to keep the security valid and uncompromised. You'd essentially be saying that we should bind all people, as a matter of law, to nondisclosure to protect poor security. Tennessee did that with Netflix passwords, and there's a very strong argument that such a law is blatantly unconstitutional as a limitation of free speech. Denmark'sMMV, however.

If the copyrighted works are accessible by simple knowledge of an arrangement of characters in a hyperlink, and no other security measure is required, then they are protected only by StO. Depending on what you're talking about, this may be enough. U.S. trade secrets require 1) something that provides economic advantage by being kept secret, and 2) reasonable efforts to keep that thing secret. StO might well-enough be reasonable, though not advisable, to protect trade secrets. But this wasn't a trade secret case. It's a copyright case. In many countries, and for a while in the United States, copyright requires disclosure of copyright notice, which means disclosure of the work. You couldn't keep something locked in a vault, and then when someone published something allegedly infringing, you pulled the item out of the vault and claimed copyright infringement.

Furthermore, in order to constitute copyright infringement, copying must actually occur. I'm assuming this was a contributory copyright infringement case, similar to U.S. P2P uploading cases, but even under such rules, generally at common law, contributory or secondary copyright infringement requires more than a provision of a link. The Dutch Supreme Court has established that hyperlinking to copyright material is not copyright infringement. This ruling, which states that hyperlinking to copyrighted material is copyright infringement, stands in contest to that, no matter what way you want to spin it. It should be overturned. If the plaintiff had brought a misappropriation of trade secrets claim, then it might have had more success. But copyright infringement through hyperlinks, either direct or contributory, is not a recognizable wrong.

Rest assured we can celebrate the cooperative effort to eradicate all forms of trolls. Cheers! :)

Actually, and essentially in support of your conclusion although contrary to your opening, the Eastern District of Texas - while the margin is narrowing - is still much friendlier to patent plaintiffs than a strong majority of other districts. Or, specifically, it would be more fair to say the E.D.Tex. is not horrendously biased to favor the defendant, like several other districts. Most of it boils down to the Local Patent Rules. For example, E.D.Tex. allows for very liberal amendments of initial infringement contentions. In layman's terms this means that a patent-holder can sue an alleged infringer with "well-formed" suspicion that the defendant's product is allegedly infringing, go into discovery, and then determine the details as to whether or not the product is actually infringing based on evidence. In districts like the Northern District of California, the local patent rules expressly prohibit this behavior, requiring that the plaintiff have essentially absolute proof that the defendant's product is infringing before being able to move to the discovery phase.

While N.D.Cal's strict rules cut down on troll litigation, it does become a problem for plaintiffs when the details of how a defendant's product works is only available to the defendant: for example, closed-source software or secret formulas or recipes not available to the public. While software patents aren't treated well here on Slashdot, what this would allow someone to do is to copy line for line someone else's code, resell it, and then have total immunity in the Northern District of California from patent infringement (and good luck proving copyright infringement when you don't have access to the source code...). The Eastern District of Texas (specifically Judge Ward of said district) realized the potential problem for abuse and thus created a standing order to modify the Local Patent Rules and allow for more liberal discovery. Good for plaintiffs (troll and honest) who are attempting to prove infringement, bad for defendants (honest and infringing) who now lose shelter and have to deal with costly discovery.

The problem is two-fold. First, the dichotomy between local patent rules across federal districts completely destroys the concept of "one body of federal law." It encourages forum shopping, which is exactly what we're seeing here where a plaintiff chooses where to file suit in a place most favorable to him (thus theoretically unbalancing the concept of a fair and impartial trial). Second, it encourages patent trolls to flock to a district and abuse the system. In a perfect world, discovery would be allowed and initial infringement contentions could be modified, but anyone found to be patent trolling would be liable for attorney's fees and damages if discovery proved senseless litigation or the patent was invalidated (or hell, I'd just make a rule where you have to actually manufacture the patented product to have a claim for damages... none of this treating IP like physical property where you have an arbitrary right to exclude). In reality, it causes people to see the ratking of patent trolls form in E.D.Tex, and everyone blames the system there for supporting patent trolls and praises draconian districts like N.D.Cal for arbitrarily (and contrary to federal mandate) favoring defendants.

As more patent trolls flood in, the win-margin is narrowing, because even the Eastern District of Texas tires of senseless lawsuits. But the rules are still much more favorable to plaintiffs in those districts, and any patent lawyer worth his salt is going to find a way to establish personal jurisdiction in that district.

I commend you for inventing my new favorite unit of measurement. "You'll find the average homework for this law class to measure around 2.3 AS per night." So what's the conversion rate for Atlas Shruggeds to Fountainheads?

Ads. Data caps. Access restriction. Post-upload revisions. Censorship. If you can equate streaming to downloading, you can equate licensing to ownership.

Note that recipes can be patented, however, so long as the recipe does something particularly novel and non-obvious. Like tomato beer, or salsa without spicy chili peppers. Software patents are kind of dumb, though, because it's awfully hard to think of a series of programming lines as non-obvious.

It's a little more than that. You can impede the investigation into something you are innocent of by denying access to evidence that would either prove that you are innocent (or guilty.) In this case, the FCC is saying that Google wouldn't turn over e-mail evidence or the name of the engineer who authorized the data collection process. If Pops thinks Timmy broke the neighbor's window, Timmy is going to get in trouble when he doesn't let Dad into his closet to see if the baseball's still there. Pretty much the same thing here.

Wicked, tricksy, false! It chokeses, burnses us! Gollum! Gollum!

http://funpics.classicfun.ws/var/albums/Funpics/On%20the%20Internet%20nobody%20knows%20you're%20a%20dog.jpg?m=1300661194

The problem with adopting a multi-partisan system over a bipartisan system is that it's inherently undemocratic. A bipartisan system, while it presents an either/or scenario on issues, does have the advantage of the elected official being a representative of the majority of the people. If you had five parties running, the winner might win with 22% of the voting population's support, and then the 22% would be able to impose their political views on the remaining 78% because the 78% couldn't choose to back a single candidate. This is essentially what happened to the democratic party every time a green party candidate would run. A bipartisan system forces compromise for the sake of ensuring that a candidate represents, at least tenuously, the majority of the population.

I am aware that the U.S.'s bipartisan system is a result of the winner-takes-all electorate system, that shifting to a party-proportional representation system would reduce the centric pressures of the winner-takes-all system, thereby preventing a tyranny of the majority that I mentioned above. However, party-proportional representation systems have their own flaws as well, particularly that of legislative gridlock and the problem of a "cacophony of voices," whereby the number of increasingly differing political opinions worsens the signal-to-noise ratio in the legislative system. Inevitably it boils down into an argument about the benefits/disadvantages of the Electoral College, which would derail the topic further; but I will point out that as "unrepresentative" as the indirect Electoral College may seem, true democracy, over a republic, has never lasted more than a few centuries, due to legislative gridlock and the tyranny of the majority.