"Suing Monsanto: Intellectual Property, Genetic Contamination,
and Farmers' Rights"

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 6:00 PM

Dan Ravicher, Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation and Lecturer of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law will be speaking at Yale Law School on October 26 about intellectual property and patent laws as they apply to genetic modification.  Ravicher is a registered patent attorney is representing 83 plaintiffs (including CT NOFA) in the case Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), et al. v. Monsanto.

Free and open to the public, the talk begins at 6:10 pm and is located in Room 120 at 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT.  The event is co-sponsored by the Community and Economic Development Clinic, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Connecticut (CT NOFA), the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, the Yale Environmental Law Association, and the Yale Sustainable Food Project.

In June CT NOFA joined over 80 farming, food and environmental organizations and individual farmers who do not want to use or sell transgenic seed, in suing seed-developer, Monsanto Corporation.  The complaint filed with the federal district court states that transgenic seeds contaminate organic seeds, crops, and threatens to eliminate entire organic varieties of foods.  Monsanto Corporation has sued small farmers for patent infringement if their seeds or crops become contaminated by genetically modified crop varieties. The plaintiffs in OSGATA et al. v. Monsanto demand a binding legal covenant to protect family farmers threatened by GMO contamination. 

This is the first of several events CT NOFA has scheduled to raise awareness about GMOs in the food system.  Representative Richard Roy, a lead advocate for Connecticut GMO labeling laws, will speak at our Annual Meeting on October 29 at Common Ground High School in New Haven.  Jeffrey Smith, Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and author of Seeds of Deception will be the keynote at the CT NOFA Winter Conference on March 3, 2012. 

Link to Yale event listing>