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Plant patents
Patented plants protected by a patent/royalty system don't have to be
expensive. Most of them aren't. And they aren't expensive partly because of the patent and royalty system itself. The system protects the investment of the hybridizer (maker) of the plant and it protects the investment of the propagator/cloning company. Specifically it protects these people from each other and from the commercial grower who buys the stock material in order to produce a whole crop of the cloned plant. The patent /royalty system is responsible for most of those Home Depot and garden center orchids that we love so much. Most orchid hybridizers can't afford to clone their really nice plants in numbers so high that everyone who wants one can get one. Imagine the cost and space required to make and grow 100,000 identical red Phals to maturity. Imagine the marketing costs to sell them. Those hybridizers large enough to afford the costs of growing and marketing their own cloned plants patent them in order to protect *this* investment. Who are they protecting it from? Cloning companies and other large commercial growers. Those hybridizers with a nice plant who can't afford to grow and market 100,000 identical plants instead offer it to a company that does the cloning and marketing in exchange for a fixed price, a certain number of personal copies and maybe even for a royalty on each plant the cloning company sells to others. Most royalties to the hybridizer are only a couple of cents per plant. I can think of two big cloning companies in the United States. Twyford and Floraculture. It is their sole business to find good plants and make a million copies of them to sell to commercial growers. If I make a nice plant then I want to either sell them the right to copy it or protect it so they can't. Hopefully my rights of ownership and our laws mean something to them. But if I don't protect it and I sell them a kiekie, it is theirs to do with what they want. Or is it? I don't know the answer to this sticky little question. I hope we don't kill all the lawyers. I might need one. Anyway, the cloning company will market the clones to commercial growers who need material that is proven to meet their contractual obligations with their customers, like Home Depot, catalog companies, garden centers, etc. They maintain the plant cells and records of propagation as long as the line of cloned cells survives. We are talking 100s of thousands of copies here. The commercial growers who supply plants to Garden Centers and catalog companies buy the cloned stock. The patent and royalty system prevents them from buying a few plants and making a 100,000 "free ones". (As if the expenses involved in making 100,000 plants could be called 'free') You must realize that almost all garden plants are produced this way now, not just orchids. Everything from Tulips to Poinsettias. The originator of the plant gets paid. The cloning company gets paid, the commercial grower gets paid and the end buyer gets a quality plant with proven characteristics at a home depot price. It's an evil system and we should put our collective foot down. It is the cloning companies and the middle man growers who are always on the lookout for good stock plants to clone. Most of the end growers and big commercial producers in the industry are visited periodically by observers who monitor their compliance with the royalty agreements. These are the people who need to worry about vegetatively propagating stock that is protected by patents and royalty systems. "Lets see you bought 100,000 'Big Chief' Geranium cuttings from us, how come you have 200,000 on your benches? Would you like to buy the right to make a 100,000 extra copies now or after the lawsuit?" I don't think there are too many companies that worry about propagation by end consumers, per se. But then an end consumer is not really going to clone and market them overtly in numbers too big to ignore, right? Lets put this parts in capitol letters: If it is protected, I *CAN* POLLINATE IT but I CAN'T CLONE IT. And lets keep it in perspective, I can't stop it from making a keiki which belongs to me if it does so I can sell it if I want. Can't I? Drat, are all the lawyers dead already? I have another question. Al PS. I like lawyers. I'm just playing. |
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