Germany via EcoNet
(January 22) - I was sued last winter by the US agrochemical corporation
Monsanto for distributing an announcement on GENESIS, a German mailing list
concerned with novel food.
I received a message
from Greenpeace activists in Duesseldorf who were preparing a demonstration
against Monsanto Germany on November 25, 1996 to protest the import of RR-Soya,
Monsanto's genetically engineered soy beans. It was the first time that
a genetically engineered organism had been used in processed foods imported
into the European common market.
I decided to post
the announcement to the mailing list. Two days later, I received a letter
from a German lawyer representing Monsanto. It stated that I had distributed
a proclamation on the Internet calling Monsanto a "corporation of poisons,
genes and swindle." (The slogan came from the Greenpeace activists.)
Monsanto claimed
that I offended the company with the word "swindle" and endangered
their creditworthiness. They gave me three days to sign a declaration promising
never again to say: "Monsanto, the corporation of swindle." Every
time I repeated this sentence, I would have to pay Monsanto 100,000 DM ($66,666).
I sent Monsanto's
lawyer a fax refusing to sign the declaration because (1) I was not the
author of the proclamation, and (2) the opinions expressed are sheltered
by the German constitution.
Monsanto asked a
Duesseldorf court for a ruling that would forbid me to speak or write the
sentence. The court granted a preliminary judgment, ruling that if I repeated
the sentence, I would have to pay 500,000 DM ($333,333) or spend six months
in prison.
Monsanto argued
that because the proclamation was distributed on the Internet, anyone with
an Internet connection could read the message. But the GENESIS e-mail list
had only 24 members and wasn't directly reachable from the Internet.
How did Monsanto
know about the proclamation? Court proceedings revealed that Monsanto's
public relations in Germany are performed by the New York company Young
& Rubicam (Y&R). A so-called "Internet counselor" from
Y&R who subscribed to GENESIS received the proclamation in the US. From
there, the message was redirected to the Y&R subsidiary in Frankfurt,
which faxed the proclamation to Monsanto Germany in Duesseldorf.
In court, the Y&R
Internet counselor declared that he read an explanation of how to subscribe
to GENESIS on one of my web pages, and he presented a copy of said page.
But everyone could see that the page was about GENTECH, not GENESIS. (It
was part of Monsanto's argument that GENESIS could be accessed from the
Internet.)
On January 8, 1997,
all of Monsanto's claims were rejected. I won. Monsanto has to pay the court
costs.
I still wonder why
Monsanto sued me. Other people are calling Monsanto's artificial sweetener
aspartame a "deadly poison" without being sued. I think the reason
is the campaign against RR-Soya. Public opinion and media coverage were
not in favor of the genetically engineered food. Maybe Monsanto feared a
strong demonstration and tried everything to stifle upcoming protest.
- Werner Reisberger
Schoellmannstr 20, D-44807 Bochum, Germany, (49) 234 540294, fax: -540239,
werner@tribe.ping.de.
German Activist Sued by Monsanto