#Patent Agency

[retropopcult]

Washington, D.C., circa 1901. "View of G Street N.W., north side, looking west from Ninth Street."

[patentagency]

Affordable Patent Agency in Texas offers expert patent services to protect your inventions. Our experienced team provides comprehensive patent solutions at competitive rates. Secure your ideas with the trusted patent agency in Texas. Contact us today for a consultation. Visit- https://affordablepatentagency.com/

[affordablepatentagencytx]

Exploring the Importance of Plant Patents in Agricultural Innovation

Plant Patents in Agricultural Innovation

The idea of plant patents in agricultural innovation is crucial, where productivity and sustainability depend heavily on innovation. In addition to safeguarding plant breeders’ intellectual property rights, plant patents encourage ongoing research and development in the agricultural industry. Gaining insight into the significance of plant patents can help us better understand how they promote innovation and help progress agriculture worldwide.

The Affordable Patent Agency provides comprehensive patent services, including plant patents in agricultural innovation. Our approach extends beyond patent writing and filing, drawing from extensive research and startup experiences. We ensure maximum protection and monetization potential for innovative agricultural endeavors by strategically crafting patents and intellectual property portfolios. Rest assured, our cost-effective solutions prioritize quality, guaranteeing that your invention receives the broadest protection it rightfully deserves.

Plant Patents in Agricultural Innovation: A Protective Measure Against Innovation

Plant patents in agricultural innovation serve as a protective measure against innovation through several vital mechanisms. 

Exclusivity and Rights Protection

Grants breeders have exclusive rights to their plant varieties.

Prevents unauthorized reproduction, sale, or use of patented varieties.

Encourages investment in research and development without fear of immediate imitation or appropriation.

Legal Framework and Dispute Resolution

Establishes a legal framework for resolving disputes related to intellectual property rights.

Allows breeders to take legal action against infringers.

Deters potential infringers and safeguards the interests of innovators.

Incentivizing Novel Traits and Characteristics

Encourages the introduction of new and distinct plant varieties.

Stimulates exploration of novel traits and characteristics in crops.

Expands the genetic diversity of cultivated plants.

Promoting Transparency and Knowledge Exchange

Requires breeders to disclose detailed information about patented varieties.

Facilitates the exchange of knowledge and best practices among breeders, researchers, and farmers.

Enhances transparency and accountability within the agricultural innovation ecosystem.

Overall, plant patents in agricultural innovation function as a crucial protective measure that safeguards the intellectual property rights of breeders and fosters a conducive environment for continuous innovation and improvement in the agricultural sector.

Enhancing Agriculture Through Innovation

Beyond protection, plant patents enhance agricultural techniques and technologies. Plant patents encourage breeders to create new plant varieties, improving crop yields, disease resistance, and agricultural output.

Plant patents also incentivize breeders and research organizations to collaborate and share knowledge, fostering innovation and expertise. This collaborative ecosystem promotes agricultural innovation, creating sustainable farming practices and robust crop types for different environmental circumstances and consumer preferences.

Agricultural innovation plant patents can solve global problems like food security and climate change. Breeders can reduce the negative effects of climate variability on agricultural productivity and assure food security for a growing global population by developing drought-resistant, heat-tolerant, and nutrient-rich crop types.

Plant patents boost investment in niche and specialty crops that lack breeding incentives. Diversifying crop kinds strengthens agricultural systems and encourages biodiversity, reducing reliance on commodity crops and monoculture farming concerns.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Types of Plant Varieties Are Eligible for Plant Patents in Agricultural Innovation?

The types of plant varieties that are eligible for plant patents in agricultural innovation include new and distinct varieties of asexually reproduced plants, including cultivars, hybrids, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). To qualify for patent protection, these varieties must be novel, non-obvious, and reproducible.

How Long Does a Plant Patent Last in Agricultural Innovation?

A plant patent in agricultural innovation lasts for 20 years from filing the patent application. Plant patents granted under the Plant Patent Act provide protection in the United States. Once the patent expires, the plant variety enters the public domain, allowing others to propagate and use it for commercial purposes freely.

What Are the Benefits of Obtaining a Plant Patent in Agricultural Innovation?

The benefits of obtaining a plant patent in agricultural innovation include exclusive rights to the breeder, allowing them to control the patented plant variety’s propagation, sale, and distribution. This exclusivity gives breeders a competitive advantage, enabling them to recoup investments in research and development and generate profits from their innovations. Additionally, plant patents incentivize the development of new and improved plant varieties, driving innovation and enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability.

Plant Patents in Agricultural Innovation in Dallas

Patenting an agricultural plant innovation is complicated and requires the skills of patent law and agricultural innovation experts. In agricultural innovation, you need a patent agent or attorney with experience safeguarding your plant patents.

At Affordable Patent Agency, LLC, we specialize in affordable patent filing services for agricultural inventors. We will guide you through the patenting process to protect your plant discoveries with a comprehensive understanding of inventions and patent regulations.

Contact our professional patent agency today to protect your agricultural inventions. Affordable Patent Agency, LLC will protect agricultural inventions with you.

Inquire About Your Plant Patent Today Call Affordable Patent Agency, LLC at (855) 444-1946

Affordable Patent Agency, LLC 4131 N. Central Expressway Suite 900, Dallas, TX 75204 (855) 444-1946

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

i feel like there's something so beautifully, terribly, ironically unfair about the contrast between prism and solaris.

incredibly talented women, both swayed by the power and resources zoraxis could provide for them. both so desperate to develop their separate technologies they were willing to be swayed to the side of a backstabbing corporate overlord- despite not even liking them. undoubtedly risking their lives for the sake of their technology- knowingly or otherwise.

having the project they loved so much ripped out of their hands. watching sheets of metal and bolts and rivets so lovingly fastened come undone in the blink of a flaming, volatile second. watching a little piece of you get torn apart and die, and knowing good and well that you should have died with it.

prism wanted a legacy. something that could surpass her- live on for a lifetime after her... and even after the robot agent project failed, she still got that, in the end. because she had it all along, and she just failed to realize it.

but solaris' dream was to propagate laser technology. it was a goal she could not reach without zoraxis' assistance. she wanted to push the boundaries of the potential of her craft. and she did. the death engine was- according to the agency- one of zoraxis' most lethal inventions. it was solaris' crowning achievement. decades- or perhaps even centuries ahead of the current scientific standard.

and phoenix destroyed it in under ten minutes. and she will never get that back. her ties with zoraxis- as far as we know- are cut. her reputation is probably badly damaged after her public association with the company. she will probably never be exposed to the proper conditions to build anything even technologically close to the death engine ever again.

the culmination of her life's work was ripped away from her, and where prism was left with introspection, solaris was left with nothing.

[wonder-worker]

"Among their complaints [in 1460, the Yorkists] specifically blamed the earls of Wiltshire and Shrewsbury and Viscount Beaumont for ‘stirring’ the king [Henry VI] to hold a parliament at Coventry that would attaint them and for keeping them from the king’s presence and likely mercy, asserting that this was done against [the king's] will. To this they added the charge that these evil counselors were also tyrannizing other true men* without the king’s knowledge. Such claims of malfeasance obliquely raised the question of Henry’s fitness as a king, for how could he be deemed competent if such things happened without his knowledge and against his wishes? They also tied in rumors circulating somewhat earlier in the southern counties and likely to have originated in Calais that Henry was really ‘good and gracious Lord to the [Yorkists] since, it was alleged, he had not known of or assented to their attainders. On 11 June the king was compelled to issue a proclamation stating that they were indeed traitors and that assertions to the contrary were to be ignored." - Helen Maurer, "Margaret of Anjou: "Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England"

Three things that we can surmise from this:

We know where the "Henry was an innocent helpless king being controlled and manipulated by his Evil™ advisors" rhetoric came from**.

The Yorkists were deliberately trying to downplay Henry VI's actual role and involvement in politics and the Wars of the Roses. They cast him as a "statue of a king", blamed all royal policies and decisions on others*** (claiming that Henry wasn't even aware of them), and framed themselves as righteous and misunderstood counselors who remained loyal to the crown. We should keep this in mind when we look at chronicles' comments of Henry's alleged passivity and the so-called "role reversal" between him and Queen Margaret.

Henry VI's actual agency and involvement is nevertheless proven by his own actions. We know what he thought of the Yorkists, and we know he took the effort to publicly counter their claims through a proclamation of his own. That speaks louder than the politically motivated narrative of his enemies, don't you think?

*There was some truth to these criticisms. For example, Wiltshire (ie: one of the men named in the pamphlet) was reportedly involved in a horrible situation in June which included hangings and imprisonments for tax resistance in Newbury. The best propagandists always contain a degree of truth, etc. **I've seen some theories on why Margaret of Anjou wasn't mentioned in these pamphlets alongside the others even though she was clearly being vilified during that time as well, and honestly, I think those speculations are mostly unnecessary. Margaret was absent because it was regarded as very unseemly to target queens in such an officially public manner. We see a similar situation a decade later: Elizabeth Woodville was vilified and her whole family - popularly and administratively known as "the queen's kin" - was disparaged in Warwick and Clarence's pamphlets. This would have inevitably associated her with their official complaints far more than Margaret had been, but she was also not directly mentioned. It was simply not considered appropriate. ***This narrative was begun by the Duke of York & Warwick and was - demonstrably - already widespread by the end of 1460. When Edward IV came to power, there seems to have been a slight shift in how he spoke of Henry (he referred to Henry as their "great enemy and adversary"; his envoys were clearly willing to acknowledge Henry's role in Lancastrian resistance to Yorkist rule; etc), but he nevertheless continued the former narrative for the most part. I think this was because 1) it was already well-established and widespread by his father, and 2) downplaying Henry's authority would have served to emphasize Edward's own kingship, which was probably advantageous for a usurper whose deposed rival was still alive and out of reach. In some sense, the Lancastrians did the same thing with their own propaganda across the 1460s, which was clearly not as effective in terms of garnering support and is too long to get into right now, but was still very relevant when it came to emphasizing their own right to the throne while disparaging the Yorkists' claim.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Marion&Marion patent agency's headquarter on the University street, Montreal, QC, Canada

Canadian vintage postcard, mailed in 1914 to Rotterdam, Netherlands

[pen1ag0n]

blue box is obviously phasing out ptg bc they have that new bg coming. they don't seem to know what to do with btob either if you ask me? it's all 😬 considering they already had 2 bgs allegedly ready to debut but both times it felt apart, second time it was vt who cancelled the debut 🤔 right after they aquired enough blue box's shares to become the largesr shareholder and take over. they don't care for anything except 🤑. which makes it even stranger why kill a source of income? either they decided they don't have the means to support x amount of acts and have to pick their battles or just aren't happy with ptg's results. well it's hard to improve sales when they aren't able to do a proper comeback. maybe my theory of another conflict within the higher up management personnel could have some merit after all. doesn't help blue box seems to lose on all their investments and most of them are weirdly outside the realm of music. someone had no idea how to run an entertaiment company 😬

[ankurkkr91-blog]

How European Patents Work and What You Need to Know

A patent is a legal way to protect an idea. The person who owns the patent also called the patentee, can sue anyone in a certain area who uses the product without their permission. In most countries, a patent is only good for 20 years at most. Because someone has a license, that doesn't mean they can use their invention right away. The owner needs to be careful not to hurt other people's rights.

You used to have to go to the national patent office and fill out an application to get a patent in that country. If copyright protection was wanted across Europe, separate applications had to be made for each country. But since 1978, people have been able to apply for a European patent to get a claim that might be valid in more than one country.

A European patent: what is it?

Instead of applying for each national patent separately, people and companies can go to the European Patent Office (EPO) and ask for a European patent. The European Patent Office (EPO) will look over this European patent entry instead of each country doing its review. Because of this, it is now easier and cheaper for people in Europe to get property rights.

You can ask for protection in any or all of the countries that are part of the EPC. In general, if you want to protect your invention in three or more European member countries, getting a European patent is cheaper than getting patents from each country.

Who can fill out an application for a European patent?

A European patent can be applied for by either a person or a business. They will have to show proof that they came up with the idea to get a title.

For a European patent, you can either apply for it yourself or give a European patent attorney permission to do it for you. People who are professionally trained and have experience with the EPO and the application process are called European patent attorney.

If you do not live or have a company in one of the EPC member nations, you must have a European patent attorney help you with the whole application process, except for when you send in the first copy of your application.

[patntech]

Patent Agents in India

Partner with seasoned patent agents in India for a smooth patenting journey. Your innovation, our expertise.

[patentagency]

Patent Agency in Texas - Affordable Patent Agency Discover Affordable Patent Agency in Texas, your reliable partner for cost-effective patent services. Secure and protect your innovations with our expert and budget-friendly solutions.

[reasonsforhope]

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week

1. ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

In 2016, Japanese scientists Oda and Hiraga published their discovery of Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium capable of breaking down PET plastic into basic nutrients. This finding marked a shift in microbiology's perception, recognizing the potential of microbes to solve pressing environmental issues.

France's Carbios has successfully applied bacterial enzyme technology to recycle PET plastic waste into new plastic products, aligning with the French government's goal of fully recycling plastic packaging by 2025.

2. HIV cases in Amsterdam drop to almost zero after PrEP scheme

According to Dutch AIDS Fund, there were only nine new cases of the virus in Amsterdam in 2022, down from 66 people diagnosed in 2021. The organisation claimed that 128 people were diagnosed with HIV in Amsterdam in 2019, and since 2010, the number of new infections in the Dutch capital has fallen by 95 per cent.

3. Cheap and drinkable water from desalination is finally a reality

In a groundbreaking endeavor, engineers from MIT and China have designed a passive solar desalination system aimed at converting seawater into drinkable water.

The concept, articulated in a study published in the journal Joule, harnesses the dual powers of the sun and the inherent properties of seawater, emulating the ocean’s “thermohaline” circulation on a smaller scale, to evaporate water and leave salt behind.

4. World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials

The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.

Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports.

5. After Decades of Pressure, US Drugmaker J&J Gives Up Patent on Life-Saving TB Drug

In what can be termed a huge development for drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) patients across large parts of the world, bedaquiline maker Johnson and Johnson said on September 30 (Saturday) that it would drop its patent over the drug in 134 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

6. Stranded dolphins rescued from shallow river in Massachusetts

7. ‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, and the world’s foremost energy economist, said much more needed to be done but that the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles were encouraging.

---

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation here:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog this post with your friends.

[stealingyourbones]

Fic prompt, Young Justice era:

Robin(Tim) and Superboy break into the Fenton Ops Center after discovering a faction of the DEO that was created exclusively for dealing with ghosts.

They came across this sub-agency while combing through hacked documents after saving Greta, and found out the Department of Extranormal Operations formed the Ghost Investigation Ward and gets special ghost-hunting weapons from mad scientist inventors in a small Illinois town.

Danny (with his sharper senses) hears the break in and goes to investigate with the Fenton Creep Stick. Robbers get hired on occasion to steal inventions that aren’t patented yet. He hears movement just on the other side of the door and goes in swinging. Hits Superboy in the back and makes him stumble, which causes serious alarm from the two heroes.

“That actually almost hurt!” Superboy says in surprise, staring wide-eyed at the new kid holding a splintered baseball bat.

“You cracked the Creep Stick,” Danny stares at the bat with his mouth open. “I didn’t know it could break.”

“Rob? I think this guy has powers.”

Danny looks up, blinking in shock, “Your name is Rob? And you became a Robber? Dude. You don’t have to define yourself by what your parents named you.”

Superboy tries to hide his laughter while Robin sputters. “I’m not - They didn’t -”

“Oh!” Danny has an epiphany. “Did you name yourself that? I chose my name too, but I’m just Danny. I didn’t go and name myself after an illegal profession. Like, can you imagine if I was an arsonist named Bernie? Or a skeevy car salesman named Otto? I know it’s hard to choose a name when you’re trans, and, I gotta admit, being a robber named Rob is hilarious, but there’s more options out there, I promise. For names and career paths.”

Superboy is wheezing at this point and Robin’s face is near fuchsia. Instead of addressing any of that, Robin gets angry.

“We aren’t robbers! We’re heroes! I’m Robin. that’s Superboy. Your parents sell weapons that hurt people and we’re here to stop that!”

Danny tosses the broken Creep Stick over his shoulder and smiles wide.

“Why didn’t you say so! Oh man, this is great. I’ve been sabotaging their stuff for years. If you’re here to help I’ve got a couple projects you can definitely smash.”

.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election

I'm in to TARTU, ESTONIA! Overcoming the Enshittocene (Monday, May 8, 6PM, Prima Vista Literary Festival keynote, University of Tartu Library, Struwe 1). AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Amazon is very good at everything it does, including being very bad at the things it doesn't want to do. Take signing up for Prime: nothing could be simpler. The company has built a greased slide from Prime-curiosity to Prime-confirmed that is the envy of every UX designer.

But unsubscribing from Prime? That's a fucking nightmare. Somehow the company that can easily figure out how to sign up for a service is totally baffled when it comes to making it just as easy to leave. Now, there's two possibilities here: either Amazon's UX competence is a kind of erratic freak tide that sweeps in at unpredictable intervals and hits these unbelievable high-water marks, or the company just doesn't want to let you leave.

To investigate this question, let's consider a parallel: Black Flag's Roach Motel. This is an icon of American design, a little brown cardboard box that is saturated in irresistibly delicious (to cockroaches, at least) pheromones. These powerful scents make it admirably easy for all the roaches in your home to locate your Roach Motel and enter it.

But the interior of the Roach Motel is also coated in a sticky glue. Once roaches enter the motel, their legs and bodies brush up against this glue and become hopeless mired in it. A roach can't leave – not without tearing off its own legs.

It's possible that Black Flag made a mistake here. Maybe they wanted to make it just as easy for a roach to leave as it is to enter. If that seems improbable to you, well, you're right. We don't even have to speculate, we can just refer to Black Flag's slogan for Roach Motel: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out."

It's intentional, and we know that because they told us so.

Back to Amazon and Prime. Was it some oversight that cause the company make it so marvelously painless to sign up for Prime, but such a titanic pain in the ass to leave? Again, no speculation is required, because Amazon's executives exchanged a mountain of internal memos in which this is identified as a deliberate strategy, by which they deliberately chose to trick people into signing up for Prime and then hid the means of leaving Prime. Prime is a Roach Motel: users check in, but they don't check out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – "relentless" (Bezos's original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented "one click checkout" – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon's relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like "fairness" or "grievance":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

Amazon also invents implausible corporate fictions that allow it to terminate entire sections of its workforce for trying to unionize, by maintaining the tormented pretense that these workers, who wear Amazon uniforms, drive Amazon trucks, deliver Amazon packages, and are tracked by Amazon down to the movements of their eyeballs, are, in fact, not Amazon employees:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-drivers-unionized-then-amazon-tried-to-terminate-his-contract/

These workers have plenty of cause to want to unionize. Amazon warehouses are sources of grueling torment. Take "megacycling," a ten-hour shift that runs from 1:20AM to 11:50AM that workers are plunged into without warning or the right to refuse. This isn't just a night shift – it's a night shift that makes it impossible to care for your children or maintain any kind of normal life.

Then there's Jeff Bezos's war on his workers' kidneys. Amazon warehouse workers and drivers notoriously have to pee in bottles, because they are monitored by algorithms that dock their pay for taking bathroom breaks. The road to Amazon's warehouse in Coventry, England is littered with sealed bottles of driver piss, defenestrated by drivers before they reach the depot inspection site.

There's so much piss on the side of the Coventry road that the prankster Oobah Butler was able to collect it, decant it into bottles, and market it on Amazon as an energy beverage called "Bitter Lemon Release Energy," where it briefly became Amazon's bestselling energy drink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

(Butler promises that he didn't actually ship any bottled piss to people who weren't in on the gag – but let's just pause here and note how weird it is that a guy who hates our kidneys as much as Jeff Bezos built and flies a penis-shaped rocket.)

Butler also secretly joined the surge of 1,000 workers that Amazon hired for the Coventry warehouse in advance of a union vote, with the hope of diluting the yes side of that vote and forestall the union. Amazon displayed more of its famously selective competence here, spotting Butler and firing him in short order, while totally failing to notice that he was marketing bottles of driver piss as a bitter lemon drink on Amazon's retail platform.

After a long fight, Amazon's Coventry workers are finally getting their union vote, thanks to the GMB union's hard fought battle at the Central Arbitration Committee:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/04/26/amazon-warehouse-workers-in-coventry-will-vote-on-trade-union-recognition/

And right on schedule, Amazon has once again discovered its incredible facility for ease-of-use. The company has blanketed its shop floor with radioactively illegal "one click to quit the union" QR codes. When a worker aims their phones at the code and clicks the link, the system auto-generates a letter resigning the worker from their union.

As noted, this is totally illegal. English law bans employers from "making an offer to an employee for the sole or main purpose of inducing workers not to be members of an independent trade union, take part in its activities, or make use of its services."

Now, legal or not, this may strike you as a benign intervention on Amazon's part. Why shouldn't it be easy for workers to choose how they are represented in their workplaces? But the one-click system is only half of Amazon's illegal union-busting: the other half is delivered by its managers, who have cornered workers on the shop floor and ordered them to quit their union, threatening them with workplace retaliation if they don't.

This is in addition to more forced "captive audience" meetings where workers are bombarded with lies about what life in an union shop is like.

Again, the contrast couldn't be more stark. If you want to quit a union, Amazon makes this as easy as joining Prime. But if you want to join a union, Amazon makes that even harder than quitting Prime. Amazon has the same attitude to its workers and its customers: they see us all as a resource to be extracted, and have no qualms about tricking or even intimidating us into doing what's best for Amazon, at the expense of our own interests.

The campaigning law-firm Foxglove is representing five of Amazon's Coventry workers. They're doing the lord's work:

https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/02/legal-challenge-to-amazon-uks-new-one-click-to-quit-the-union-tool/

All this highlights the increasing divergence between the UK and the US when it comes to labor rights. Under the Biden Administration, @NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo has promulgated a rule that grants a union automatic recognition if the boss does anything to interfere with a union election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

In other words, if Amazon tries these tactics in the USA now, their union will be immediately recognized. Abruzzo has installed an ultra-sensitive tilt-sensor in America's union elections, and if Bezos or his class allies so much as sneeze in the direction of their workers' democratic rights, they automatically lose.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/06/one-click-to-quit-the-union/#foxglove

Image: Isabela.Zanella (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballot-box-2.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en