"tuin man" wrote in
:

"Victoria Clare" wrote in message
. 240.10...
I believe that patenting a living thing is not, and should not be,
the same as patenting a simple gadget.

I once worked in a garden centre (nearly 25 years ago).
Many of our plants were sold at 1p each when sold by the dozen,
e.g.hedging. It was a large GC, with a drive through, sheds, office,
parking and off course ourselves there to serve and inform.
Yet.... somehow... many customers resented paying anything at all for
plants and did so on similar grounds to your objections to patenting
plants.

Um, I think you are putting words into my newsreader.

I have no objection to people being paid (and paid well) for their work
and enterprise, and I'm very pleased that (for example) Hill House are
able to make a living through it. Well done them.

I'm certainly not suggesting they should stand alone and defy the trend
to register their plants - that would be mad: they'd just be mown down
by others less scrupulous.

I'm just not convinced that applying patents to something as complex as
a living plant (or animal) should be exactly the same as applying a
patent to a new mouse-trap. You need a lot more information to make a
petunia than you do to make a mousetrap. Is this the only possible way
to compensate people for their work?

There have to be other ways of dealing with unique information and the
creating of new things.

You have to admit plant registration does restrict the spread of new
varieties. A number of times I've found a plant via the Web that
sounded fantastic and that I would happily spend quite a bit on, but
there is no UK /european supplier, and the nursery that bred the thing
is not set up to make international sales, or not interested in retail.

The copyleft scheme I mentioned is a system for voluntarily making some
information (sort of) free, in the belief that information that is free
leads to new ideas and discoveries as more people use it.

Victoria
--
gardening on a north-facing hill
in South-East Cornwall
--