Highly
recommended: Percy Schmeiser telling his story in
Heartbreak in the Heartland: The True Cost of Genetically Engineered Crops
Also translated into Spanish, French, Chinese, and Hindi
Monsanto is ruthlessly targeting conventional farmers who are not growing GE crops for lawsuits over patent infringements, and so they targeted a 70-year old Canadian canola farmer named Percy Schmeiser because his crops were contaminated by GE canola pollen from a neighbor's GE canola field.
SASKATOON -- The judge who ruled last year that Percy Schmeiser knowingly violated Monsanto's patent on its Roundup Ready gene in 1998 has now ruled the Bruno farmer should pay Monsanto court costs of $153,000.
That's in addition to the estimated $19,832 the two sides in the long-running patent infringement case agreed was profit from Schmeiser's 1998 canola crop.
The nearly $175,000 in damages and court costs works out to about $175 per acre.
In fact, the amount is likely between $200 and $300 an acre when Schmeiser's legal bills are counted, points out Monsanto Canada spokesperson Trish Jordan. She compares this to the $15 an acre technology use agreement Monsanto requires farmers to pay if they are using a canola variety that has the Roundup Ready gene inserted.
However, Schmeiser has always maintained he never went to producer meetings sponsored by Monsanto to find out the rules, because he grew conventional varieties of canola and always saved seed from one crop to plant his next crop.
In his judgment released a year ago, Federal Court of Canada Judge Andrew MacKay ruled that the seed which Schmeiser had saved from his 1997 crop and used to plant 1,000 acres of canola in 1998 was "known or ought to have been known by Mr. Schmeiser to be tolerant to Roundup, a glyphosate herbicide."
At trial, Schmeiser testified that herbicide resistant canola must have blown into his field in 1997.
"In a court of law, his arguments were found to be implausible," Jordan said Monday.
The Monsanto spokesperson says the amount of the damages decided upon by the judge are less important to the company than the principle of upholding the company's right to license its Roundup Ready gene for use by seed companies and farmers.
She said Monsanto has committed itself not to use any court awards in patent infringement cases for general company revenue. Instead, Jordan says Monsanto will use such court awards to pay for special charitable contributions.
Justice MacKay, who tried the case in June of 2000, ruled April 17 that Monsanto should get about two-thirds of the amount in legal fees and disbursements that the company had submitted for costs.
Monsanto Canada Inc. and its American-based parent, Monsanto Company, had sought costs in the area of $227,365. However, Toronto patent lawyer
Roger Hughes and associates submitted a bill in the amount of $726,000 to Monsanto for costs relating to prosecuting the case.
Hughes and an associate will be in Saskatoon May 15 when three judges from the Federal Court of Appeal hear arguments in the appeal of the original judgment.
That appeal was filed by Schmeiser's lawyer, Terry Zakreski of Saskatoon. It lists 17 points as the basis for the appeal.
It argues Judge MacKay erred in ruling a farmer whose field has canola seed or plants that possess the genetic modification described in the Monsanto patent has no right to grow, cultivate, harvest or sell any such seeds or plants should those seeds have come onto his land in some non-deliberate fashion.
Schmeiser testified at trial that it might have been possible that herbicide resistant canola got into his field from seed blown off passing trucks or machinery, from pollen carried to his field by wind, birds or insects or even swaths of canola that were blown onto his field from a neighbouring farm. Those arguments again form a basis to his appeal.
At trial, Monsanto brought in a number of expert witnesses who cast doubt on whether canola seed, for example, could fly off a truck a long way into a field from the road allowance.
During the trial, Schmeiser submitted several dozen photos he had taken showing "volunteer" canola plants growing randomly in ditches, beside power poles and even in the village of Bruno. He also brought in other Saskatchewan farmers to testify who said Roundup resistant volunteer canola had been found growing on their fields.
Those farmers testified that Monsanto brought in people to manually pull out such canola plants from their fields.
In the notice of appeal, Zakreski argues Judge MacKay erred by stating Monsanto had not waived its patent rights by releasing an "invention" into the environment that they cannot control.
On Monday, Zakreski says he and Schmeiser were disappointed with the judge's ruling on court costs and are considering a separate appeal of the costs issue.
Zakreski had argued the court costs in the case against his client should be set as a lump sum of $10,000, partly because Monsanto pursued Schmeiser as a test case "from among many farmers under investigation by Monsanto."
Since the decision by Judge MacKay upholding the validity of Monsanto's patent, the company has pursued legal action against a number of farmers.
Yorkton area farmer Kelly Ryczak settled out of court with Monsanto last month for an undisclosed amount after the company sued him for planting canola in 1999, 2000, and 2001 without a technology use agreement.
In the 20 months since his trial, Schmeiser has made numerous trips around the globe to speak out against genetically modified organisms and to argue farmers have a traditional right to save the seed they plant from one crop to the next.
He even maintains a Web site at www.percyschmeiser.com
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