It's quite obvious that the maintainers are often being economical with the truth, for example, from their article on Monsanto (actually Seminis) receiving a patent of a specific subsort of brocolli: (<a href="http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/information/news/monsanto-granted-patent-severed-broccoli" rel="nofollow">http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/en/information/news/monsa...</a>)<p>> "Today the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich granted a patent on conventional breeding."<p>Really? The process of conventional breeding is patented? I thought it was about brocolli?<p>> "It additionally covers a “plurality of broccoli plants .. . grown in a field of broccoli.”"<p>Quote mining. The patent makes it clear that this sentence is about the brocolli subspecies that was patented, but the authors of the article rip this sentence out of context to make it appear that all of brocolli now belongs to Monsanto.<p>Also, note that in their article only 5 sentences, about half of the first paragraph, are relevant to the patent while the remainder of the article (4.5 paragraphs) are about on how terrible these patents are. They barely discuss what the patent is really about and the article only seems to be a kneejerk based on a quick scan of the patent. Why should I agree with the author and sign the petition if he needs to be intellectually dishonest?<p>I'm not sure what my position on patents on plants are. Almost all plants that we currently cultivate could never have existed without artificial selection (unintentional or otherwise). In this specific case, Seminis had to perform focused work so that these plants could exist. It's not as if these plants just fell out of the sky.