from Paul McCartin You may know of Percy Schmeizer. He is a Canadian canola farmer. Several years ago Schmeizer’s neighbor planted a variety of canola that contained Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant gene. Schmeizer says some of the seed blew over to his 700-acre canola field and spread, contaminating with foreign genes seed he had been saving since he started producing the crop in 1947. Monsanto sued Schmeizer, claiming he was violating its intellectual property rights for growing a kind of rapeseed that contained its patented gene. A provincial court has ruled for the company, declaring that regardless of how the gene found its way onto his land, Canadian patent law provides that he is violating patent rights by growing it. Schmeizer will be in Japan in June-July to talk about his situation. You can find his schedule here: ?A‚¦‚½‚çƒIƒVƒ}ƒC?I?I ˆâ“`Žq‘g‚
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