US high court rules against soybean farmer in seed-patent case
The US Supreme Court has issued a unanimous ruling today that a soybean farmer violated patents when he planted genetically modified soybeans without first paying the intellectual-property holder. The case pitted Hugh Bowman, a septuagenarian soybean grower from Indiana, against Monsanto, the agricultural technology giant based in St Louis, Missouri. Bowman was a loyal customer of Monsanto’s genetically modified, herbicide-resistant soybeans, until he decided one year to buy seeds from a grain elevator. The elevator was known to contain seeds from Monsanto’s weed-killer-resistant plants, and Bowman selected for those soybeans by spraying his fields with herbicide. He then saved seeds from surviving soybeans to plant the next season. After eight seasons of this, Monsanto sued for violation of its patent rights: the company requires customers to buy seeds each season. Bowman argued that Monsanto’s patents had been ‘exhausted’ after the initial sale of its seed to farmers, leaving the company no hold over the seed he purchased from the grain elevator. Monsanto, in turn, argued that each year Bowman saved seed and replanted it, he had replicated the company’s patented technology. All nine Supreme Court justices agreed with the company: “Bowman planted Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan for the court. “Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct.” The decision comes as a relief to the biotechnology industry, which saw the case as a potential threat not only to agricultural biotechnology, but also to any ‘self-replicating’ technology such as genetically modified bacteria or viruses. Still, that doesn’t mean such technologies will always be as well protected as Monsanto’s soybeans, cautioned Kagan. “Our holding today is limited — addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a self-replicating product,” she wrote. “We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control.”
Refurbished Alvin submersible returns to sea
After a two-year, US$41-million upgrade, the venerable Alvin submersible is about to return to sea.
On 25 May, the research ship Atlantis will leave the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts with Alvin on board, bound for Astoria, Oregon. After a series of US Navy certification cruises in September and a scientific-verification cruise in November, Alvin will return to full service in December studying the deep ocean off the US Pacific Northwest.
The main improvement in this first phase of the Alvin upgrade is the new titanium sphere where the sub’s three-person crew sits (see Nature’s feature story ‘Deep-sea research: Dive master‘). It is 18% bigger than the previous sphere and has two extra windows and high-definition cameras, giving the scientists a better view of the deep ocean. It also has more comfortable seats. In addition, the manipulator arms have longer reach, and the sample-collection basket can carry twice as much weight — up to 181 kilograms.
Even though the new sphere was designed to travel to depths of 6,500 metres, Alvin will still be limited to its old depth of 4,500 metres after the first phase of the upgrade. Holding it back from greater depths are battery limitations, says Susan Humphries, who is in charge of the upgrade programme at WHOI. Alvin uses lead–acid batteries, which do not provide enough power for longer, deeper dives. Lithium-ion batteries would be better, but are considered to have too great a risk of fire for now. “In a few years, once the battery technology has matured, we’ll complete phase two,” says Humphries. She hopes that within five years, when Alvin is scheduled for regular maintenance, the problem will be solved.
In the meantime, ocean scientists are eager to get back below the waves. Over its five-decade career, Alvin has been responsible for revealing some of the deep ocean’s biggest surprises, including the famous ecosystems powered by hydrothermal vents rather than sunlight. Julie Huber, a microbiologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, also in Woods Hole, has been on three Alvin dives in the past. She is looking forward to the new exploration opportunities, but sounds a note of caution: “I want to wait for them to have 50 safe dives under their belt before I go back.”
Quake off eastern Russia may be biggest-ever deep temblor
An extraordinarily deep earthquake shook Russia’s Far East this morning. The magnitude-8.3 quake took place nearly 610 kilometres below Earth’s surface, according to preliminary estimates from the US Geological Survey.
Normally rocks at this depth are too hot to rupture quickly in a quake; instead, they deform slowly, like hot wax flowing rather than cold wax shattering. But beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan and west of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, the sea floor — a slab of old Pacific crust — is diving beneath Eurasia. The crust is descending fast enough — about 8 centimetres per year — to remain cool enough to rupture even at great depths. The diving plate is thus seismically active down to 650 kilometres or greater.
The epicentre of today’s quake was about 400 kilometres northwest of the
seismic
city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Deep quakes cause less damage than shallow ones, and early news reports suggest that injury and damage were minimal, although the shaking was felt as far away as Moscow. (Pictured, at right, is the seismic signal as recorded in Ruedersdorf, Germany.) A tsunami warning was issued and lifted soon thereafter.
A series of smaller quakes, up to about magnitude 6.0, had shaken just south and east of Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky over the past several days. But they were far shallower. Figuring out how the shallow earthquake swarm and the large deep quake are related — if they are — is likely to be a topic of intense study.
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