From: David Blenkinsop (blenl@sk.sympatico.ca)
Date: Sun Oct 10 1999 - 02:23:24 MDT
On Thursday, Oct 7, 1999, GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>
> Biotech Scare Is Industry's Fault
> By Henry I. Miller
> Copyright 1998 Wall Street Journal
> December 16, 1998
>
>
>
> In the early 1980s, a few major agrochemical-biotechnology companies, led by
> Monsanto,
> requested more-restrictive regulation . . .
> . . . They argued that there is something fundamentally
> different and worrisome about genetically engineered crops, and disputed the
> consensus among the international scientific community that the new
> biotechnology is no more than an extension of earlier techniques, posing
> little risk and much promise.
>
> . . .
>
> The market for agbiotech products is being undermined and distorted by
> overregulation and the public misapprehensions that it engenders. Ironically,
> both are the industry's own Frankensteinian creation.
>
Wow, this *does* sounds like a kind of illegitimate government/business
collusion, or a failed tactic by Monsanto to arrange things that way,
the idea being that more environmental regulations would help them to
monitor the use of their "intellectual property"? Now, I'm not totally
against "intellectual property" if it means that corporations treat one
another's technical investments fairly. However, this whole Monsanto
thing seems almost like a case study in stupid "intellectual property"
territorialism, trying to defend something that can fundamentally be
*copied*, i.e., a technology, against all comers. If the above quoted
article is true, they've done this "hold the high ground" strategy so
"well" that they've risked destroying their whole business, promoting
over-regulation and public opposition! For a link on how badly they've
treated their immediate customers, the farmers, try
http://www.biotech-info.net/traditions.html, notice how they even seem
to expect farmers to repel "patented" pollen away from their canola
fields!
One point that occurs to me is that on Oct 1st Eugene Leitl cross posted
an NGS-D article by Will Ware suggesting that technical patents could be
done away with, if companies like Monsanto could just keep their
technologies safe as a trade secret, then offer stock options of a sort
against the possibility of finally releasing such secrets to the public.
Is this a sound possibility, and are there other possible schemes for
getting rid of "intellectual property"? Or, maybe "intellectual
property" would work better, if only companies would do it right? I
don't think companies should always just grab one another's hard
technical work for free, but maybe industry anti-espionage guidelines,
combined with ideas like Will Ware's, would work better than someone
defending an idea or a technique as "mine, mine, all mine"??
David Blenkinsop <blenl@sk.sympatico.ca>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:28 MST