On 10/5/05 10:56, in article , "Nick
Maclaren" wrote:


In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| We're talking from two different viewpoints. I am simply saying that if a
| plant breeder has rights over a plant, only he or she has those rights.
And
| if someone propagates 144 of N. 'Bluebird' plants and sell them for *their*
| profit, they have taken that profit from the breeder to whom, rightfully,
| they should be sending the 30p or the 10p or the 50p per plant that is
| their royalty. I'm talking about propagating a plant which is under PBR
| specifically, and selling it as that plant, not just something raised in a
| yoghurt tub.

Sorry, Sacha, it is nothing to do with viewpoints. I am talking
about facts.

I am simply saying that if a plant breeder has rights over a
plant, only he or she has those rights.

That is a simplification of the law, but is roughly correct.

It is correct enough to allow the breeder or his agents to stop those who
are breeding from the mother plants without licence to do so.

If ..., they have taken that profit from the breeder to whom,
rightfully, ...

That is factually wrong. Let us ignore the morality implied by
the "rightfully", as that IS a matter of viewpoint - and I doubt
that you actually know mine on this matter :-)

Not entirely - I am aware that some people think plants don't 'belong' to
anyone but if that attitude prevails, new hybrids and new varieties simply
will cease to come along. It costs someone money to produce them on a small
scale for evaluation and then a large scale for selling and that someone or
someones have the law behind them in terms of having the right to be paid
for their work through royalties.

I think I do know your attitude to this because I think you expressed it
once before when this came up but I might be misremembering.

But they have NOT taken the profit FROM the breeder unless they
have prevented the breeder making a comparable number of sales.
They may have made an illegal profit, but in general the large
majority does not correspond to a loss of profit for the breeder.
Some may, but typically only a small proportion.

You are not allowing for e.g. Mail order sales. If a plant is not available
locally, which this illegal one would be, most people who really want it
will find somewhere to obtain it by mail order, as we see on here quite
often. They then buy it from a nursery which has paid its dues to the
supplier which get passed back to the breeder.
While I agree absolutely that a few plants sold here or there doesn't bother
anyone, the fact is that those plants are sold illegally, just as the
rip-off copies of the Workmate would have been. Just recently we found
somewhere selling Bluebird and enquired of the agent as to whether these
people had paid for the right to sell it. They hadn't and were asked to
stop selling it or to obtain future plants from the wholesalers. This was
a small nursery so the numbers being sold ran only into hundreds or possibly
thousands, not just a few at a plant sale. As I say, it would have to be
someone very pernickety who objected to that.

snip
We could argue this 'til the cows come home and I'm not prepared to bore us
all with that. I'll content myself with saying to the OP that selling a few
PBR protected plants for charity almost certainly won't upset anyone but
making your own sideline business out of someone else's PBR protected plants
almost certainly would.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)