I wonder if this means I can buy a product from someone that, unbeknownst to me, violates a patent, and the patent holder can come after me.

I'm not a fan of patenting genes in seeds, but in this case he knew that some of the seeds he was buying contained Monsanto seeds, but figured since he was a small fish in a big pond that Monsanto wouldn't mind. In Monsanto's view, they need to protect their investments in R&D.

From the article:

Starting in 1999, he bought some ordinary soybeans from a small grain elevator where local farmers drop off their harvest. ... He knew that these beans probably had Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene in them, because that's mainly what farmers plant these days. But Bowman didn't think Monsanto controlled these soybeans anymore, and in any case, he was getting a motley collection of different varieties, hardly a threat to Monsanto's seed business. 'I couldn't imagine that they'd give a rat's behind,' " he said.

Many folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law: the guy at one time signed something with Monsanto stating his exclusive source of RR soybeans would be Monsanto.

However, if I buy 160 acres of land, and plant that land in soybeans from a non-Monsanto granary with some RR seed in it, then how could I be culpable if I had no dealings at all with Monsanto? I am guessing a case wouldn't be a straight 9-0 SCOTUS ruling.

"Many folks are stating this was a clear-cut case of violation of contract law"

Those people are wrong. Monsanto did, indeed, sue him for patent infringement, not breach of contract. The contract mentioned in the case is just his license to grow the plants from Monsanto. He was forbidden from replanting those soybeans (or other patented soybeans) by patent law because such actions exceeded the scope of his license. There is nothing at all in the opinion that refers to a contract where he agreed only to buy RR soybeans from Monsanto.

Point taken. But it still seems he had a direct relationship (the license).

My point still stands. If I, having no relation whatsoever with Monsanto, buy random soybeans as feed, then plant them, then spray them with Roundup to weed out the non-Monsanto seeds, then save the seeds selected for resistance, I believe that the Court would not have made such an "easy" 9-0 decision, assuming they tried to sue me at all (rather than the granary or someone else).

The intuitive purpose of the patent protection for RR seeds seems to be preventing a different genetic research firm from creating a similar seed and also selling "Roundup-Ready Seeds" -- not preventing some random Joe who selects some unidentified seed stock for resistance to Roundup to better his yields. The fact that we should all know there may be Monsanto seeds in the mix is (or should be) irrelevant.

So it seems to me that we're still waiting for a "real" case that deals 100% with the genetics and patents.

This isn't that case because that case was decided 12 years ago: J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc., 534 U. S. 124 (2001) ("we hold that newly developed plant breeds fall within the terms of § 101 [which specifies what sorts of inventions are patentable]"). Or, really, 33 years ago: Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U. S. 303 (1980) ("A live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under § 101. Respondent's micro-organism constitutes a 'manufacture' or 'composition of matter' within that statute.")

Is there any information about the person that sold the seeds in question?

It seems that Bowman bought seeds from Monsanto, planted them, sold the harvest, bought other seeds at a grain elevator from someone else, and got in trouble when he planted them. Why is Bowman in trouble and not the grain elevator guy that sold the seeds? Is it that Bowman signed an agreement with Monsanto when he bought seeds from them?

The grain elevator was selling the seeds for animal feed.

Thanks, didn't see that in the linked article.

Yes. I've heard (here, I think) of patent trolls that prefer to go after customers rather than producers of whatever is supposedly infringing, because it's easier to convince the smaller customers to settle out of court rather than fighting and getting the patents declared invalid.

I don't think your question can be answered from this case.

The farmer here had signed an agreement with Monsanto, and knew the second hand seeds he was buying were covered by Monsanto's patent.

If the farmer had never signed an agreement with Monsanto the case may have turned out differently.

Not come after you but maybe make you stop using it.

There are no free passes like that in the US patent system as far as I'm aware. You don't have to knowingly infringe a patent to be taken to court by a patent holder and potentially held liable for patent infringement.

Maybe, but they sue a few here and there to send a message, not everyone doing it.

True, that's usually the case. However, it is still entirely up to the whim of the entity asserting a patent claim (rightly or wrongly) as to whether or not you end up with a very large legal bill. That's a huge amount of liability and personally it terrifies me.

OK, that's true but in this case, he almost certainly knew what he bought, as stated on the SCOTUS ruling.

The Republican War on Science goes on.

Let the unintended consequences begin! I always found this change suspect; a frequent rationale was that the rest of the world does it this way.

The rationale I've heard is that "first to invent" is not always easy to determine, which adds overhead. Note that prior art is still valid. If you publish your idea, that can invalidate someone else's patent. But an idea in a private notebook isn't enough anymore.

I agree that glamorizing programming is not particularly helpful, except that coder-entrepreneurs can get more attention from venture capital. Glamorizing programming, along with the app-stores, is pushing the independent programming business into a "blockbuster" mentality, a winner-take-all situation where a small number of practitioners do very well and most don't ever make their development money back. Thanks, Steve Jobs!

and don't forget the fact that there is new competition coming on the market everyday that is probably paid a tenth as much as you are.

yet another example of "responsive interface" meaning "designed for a phone or a tablet"

These are clearly slides, meant to be fullscreen on a projector. Up/Down, Left/Right, PgUp/PgDown all work, much like they would in powerpoint. I'm a little baffled by this threads hostility towards the lack of a friendlier design.

I'm on my iPhone and its totally unviewable. It looks like I can see maybe 20% of a slide, with parts if that covered up by black bars. I can't resize or re-zoom.

Total disaster.

Calm down and view it via your browser on your PC.

This is the sort of thing that happens when there are 3 or 4 gigantic ISPs instead of 15,000 local ones. Enjoy what the 1996 Telecom Deregulation Act has wrought.

I hope this isn't just a rewording of "where are all the girls?"

I don't get the reference?

Like many (any?) new environments, the Internet is rife with fools and charlatans. They make an ecosystem, in their own way.

Someone should explain to these companies how their webservers can modify the response to internal URLs (IE force to different landing pages).