[compost_tea] Re: Re: New Invention

From: Kirk Leonard <kirkleon_at_open.org>
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 12:42:31 -0800
Maddening, eh?  Boggles the mind how many times "naturally" occurs in the
descriptions and yet there's patentability?  And it's likely ALL worm
castings have chitin degraders in them.

> The chitinase-producing organisms in the worm castings
consisted of five bacteria, four fungi, and five actinomycetes. <

Hahn adds cardboard to his feed stream to boost chitin degraders, I believe.

David is right.  This just gives Hahn a corner on marketing castings for
"insect repellency" and some kind of amorphous fungal control, so it's a
marketing ploy.  Now someone should patent vermi as a natural fertilizer...

It will be interesting to see what happens if this ever gets to a court,
indeed.  In the meantime, if you don't market castings specifically for
insect repellency or fungal control, there's zero impact.

But since these are naturally occuring properties of both vermicompost and
compost at various levels I can't see how mention of them can be challenged
unless Hahn can show how they can be specifically removed.  Boy, wouldn't
that be productive...?

I hope no one changes anything you do with vermicompost based on this crap.

The work Hahn has done is not crap, btw, the patent is.  The descriptions
suggest some good practices and results, imo.  I wonder if he will publish
the studies.

Interesting that USPTO requires so little reported or replicated research on
the assertions while USNOP is holding up composts and compost teas, for
which there is much more, because of that.

Kirk



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Received on Sun Nov 07 2004 - 21:32:08 EST

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