1 seed turns into thousands in crop production so there are more then enough to replant your own crops or sell. You have a non-patented crop. Your neighbor has a patented crop. A portion of your crop is pollinated by your neighbors crop. You replant those seeds that some contain the gene, they get pollinated again by your neighbors crop as well as the now contaminated crop, especially if the patented seed has better survival or is the better producer and is selected more for it's seed. Repeat for a few years and most of your crop has some percentage of the gene. This problem would be more exponential than linear like your CD copy example. From what I read, you need 1% contamination for Monsanto not to sue you, which I don't know the full details on what that means.
The 1% of contamination I mentioned is from a legal decision against organic growers in 2013.
"Monsanto's binding representations remove any risk of suit against the appellants as users or sellers of trace amounts (less than one percent) of modified seed," the court stated in its ruling.
95% is definitely patent infringement, I couldn't find any cases where there were any suits for cross contamination. But 1% is low for a potential suit.
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u/Hedgehog101 5h ago edited 5h ago
They don't reproduce on their own, not in quantities that make sense for farming.
It's like buying a music track and selling it to your entire country as your own product.
Buy a cd -> burn a thousand copies of them and sell them
Buy a patented seed -> regrow a few thousand copies of them and sell them
Both require you to willingly and consciously infringe on patents
There are royalty free tracks that you can share
As well as non-patented crops you can grow.
They're just not by Taylor swift or herbicide resistant