when brains, biology, and copyright meet

At tonight's NetSquared event in San Francisco, I listened to Creative Commons CTO Mike Linksvayer tell the story of how a group of environmentalists is working to subvert Monsanto's claim that it owns the copyright to the DNA of its genetically modified crops.

According to Mike, this group is working on cultivating related crops nearby whose DNA is licensed more openly, under the "free" Gnu Public License (GPL) scheme.

This is interesting because, according to the terms of the GPL, any work that is based on (derived from) another GPL-licensed work must also be released under a GPL license. So, if the Monsanto crops and the GPL-licensed crops were to cross-polinate and yield a hybrid crop, that would -- theoretically -- mean the hybrid was freely available.

Regardless of where you stand on Monsanto's policies or politics, or whether this would hold up in a court of law, you have to admit that this is an incredibly clever tactic.