Sacha wrote or quoted:
"Tim Tyler" wrote:

Patenting plant varieties is ridiculous enough as it is -
I'm not sure it could be made even more so ;-)

There's nothing ridiculous about it. Without plant breeders you wouldn't
*get* new varieties of anything.

Evolution clearly demonstrates that you are completely mistaken on
this point:

Patents are a recent invention - but new varieties have been
coming into existence regularly since the dawn of life.

If you can't patent plants people will *still* breed them - since
without plants there would be no human beings.

And why should they spend time and money developing new strains for you
to benefit while they don't?

That's most certainly not the situation in the absense of patents.

Without government-enforced monopolies, there are still
time-to-market considerations to consider, and the
reputation of the supplier is still a factor.

Also - in the case of plants, there's the possibilty of only releasing
sterile hybrids - an option many companies choose to exercise anyway,
perhaps not trusting their competitors not to reverse-engineer
their R+D. Not a foolproof solution - but it prevents amateurs
from sticking the seeds in the ground and creating more plants.

Plant patents mean that individuals can't sell seeds of plants
they grow - without conducting an elaborate patent search first -
unless they are prepared to run the risk of being sued.

This is an area where the teams of lawyers involved are basically
acting as blood-sucking parasites, feeding off the farmers and
growers - and severely hampering the free exchange of information.

IMO, the best thing to do would be to fire the entire legal
department - and let the free market get on and do its thing.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ Remove lock to reply.