mavkiel said:
So from what I gather, that company went through the effort of making a pesticide resistant plants, and now folks complain they have to pay the company to use it? That doesn't exactly strike me as wrong.
If they don't want to pay the user fees they shouldn't use those strains. Now I could see it being argued that after x amount of time, their patent runs out and anyone can use it. But isn't that already covered under patent law?
Good point, except for two things. First, farmers are indeed forced to used those strains. See above where wind-borne Monsanto seeds entered a farmer's field and grew. Thus he was growing Monsanto plants without choice. And then he got sued.
The second bit is that Monsanto seed + Monsanto weedkiller is currently the cheapest way to grow crops. Anyone familiar with the Nash equilibrium knows that in an competitive environment, you must be cheap or fail. So many are choosing between Monsanto or bankruptcy.
The good news, as you point out, is that Monsanto is on a time limit and only has so many years before the generics muscle in and push them out.
They certainly won't bother with Monsanto's monopolistic practices because they won't have a monopoly.
The key problem here is that combination of Cheap Weedkiller + Resistant Seeds is in the hands of one company. If one or the other patent had expired or if the combination wasn't so cost-effective, this wouldn't be a big deal.