Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
From the perspective of intellectual property law, anything that can-
not be the subject of a patent, copyright, etc. is variously considered to be
'natural', 'public' or 'communal'. In the case of canola, no biotechnology com-
panycouldever claimtohave inventedpollentransferbywindor insects, or the
biochemical processes that lead to the growth of a mature canola plant. Seed
patents are one example of the attempt to isolate proprietary components of
living organisms from those aspects that cannot be claimed to be inventions
according to Western intellectual property law. Yet the Canadian Supreme
Court ruling in the Schmeiser case effectivelymadeMonsanto's property right
in the
former
a vehicle for it toclaimrights over the
latter
(namely, the fullgrown
RRc in Schmeiser's fields and its seeds). The ruling introduced a separation,
at once semantic and physical, between different kinds of canola plants.
On the one hand were those that 'contained' Monsanto's RR genes.
Given canola's promiscuity, this means that the Supreme Court decision
effectively denied Canadian farmers the right to grow non-proprietary
canola less than 3 kilometres from any field sown with GM canola. This
is a non-trivial outcome, especially for farmers trying to grow crops that
are certified as 'organic'. On the other hand, there were those canola plants
that contained either no proprietary genes or only those of a single seed
manufacturer with whom a farmer had a contract. In order to make this
distinction stick, the Court had to finesse the distinction between 'prod-
ucts of nature' and 'inventions'. While all crops can be argued to contain
processes and characteristics that are irreducible to human 'inventions' of
any kind, the Court implied that some crops are more reducible than oth-
ers. Though all canola has aspects that are not patentable, the Court ruling
differentiated the crop according to which 'unnatural' components it con-
tains. In this (awkward) way, the 'product of nature' doctrine was upheld,
even as full-grown canola was separated into categories according to whose
intellectual property it embodied.
The Court's decision sets a precedent that gives biotechnology compa-
nies reason to believe that patent rights are, in fact, rights over the entire
places considerable responsibility on farmers of all stripes to demonstrate
to potentially litigious firms that their crops are either 'organic', or else
do not contain any unpaid for proprietary genes. Meanwhile, unless they
claim intellectual property rights of their own and/or have the resources to
pay for legal aid, farmers find it difficult to undo the legal boundary work
that is placing Monsanto and similar companies in such a commercially
advantageous position.
BEASTLY BEHAVIOUR: CROSSING THE HUMAN-ANIMAL DIVIDE
I want now to move away from intellectual property claims to parts of
the non-human world and examine the case of bestiality (or what's more
