"Victoria Clare" wrote in message
. 240.10...
(Nick Maclaren) wrote in news:c6qbg3$ek6$1
@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk:
snip

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.
Interestingly, many of these objectors were farmers who would not have taken
kindly to the idea that they should do the same with their produce. But
then, that folk for you... some just never think!
Plants, being as natural as water, they would argue, should be provided for
less than 1p each, or better still, free of charge, where free of charge
means just that and not free at point of sale with monies later withdrawn
from the public purse.
That such attitudes are still around today perhaps explains why an excellent
gardener can still only expect a pay rate which is a mere fraction of that
which is automatically awarded to say, a thoroughly incompetent solicitor,
accountant, journalist etc, any of which often cause even worse
unpleantantness and an even bigger stink than say an incompetent janitor.

Patrick

Victoria Clare29/4/04 9:51
10

(Nick Maclaren) wrote in news:c6qbg3$ek6$1
@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk:

You may ignore all such crap, until and unless the monopolists
get the IP laws extended to covering such things. At MOST, you are
forbidden to propagate plants FOR SALE, and that applies only to
plants with Plant Breeder's Rights.

And we hope not.

I believe that patenting a living thing is not, and should not be, the same
as patenting a simple gadget.

A living thing is as much a commodity as anything else. Race horse owners
shouldn't be paid if their mare produces a promising foal or their stallion
covers a good brood mare? The semen straws cattle breeders send abroad
should be free?
In the case of plants, the grower and or breeder has had to spend hours
working on it, has to bulk up and get together enough samples for testing,
has to send the plant to various labs for that testing and perhaps
comparison against other, similar plants, has to spend time and money on
compost, pots, heating, lighting and then, finally, has to spend quite a lot
of money licensing that plant as 'his product'. Without the people who do
that sort of thing you would be growing only species plants or plants that
had hybridised naturally in the wild. Many of the plants we all have now in
our gardens have been bred by someone deliberately and some have been worth
patenting, others haven't, so pass into the public domain freely. But just
think of all the great rose nurseries there have been and imagine rose
gardens without them. And that's just one plant. And I am prepared to bet
that if you bred a plant that could bring you in a reasonable income each
year, helping to make up for the otherwise small revenue of most nurserymen,
you wouldn't sniff at it! ;-)
snip
I agree with what Patrick has said in his post. Coming fairly new to this
life, it seems to me that some people think that a nurseryman is merely
enjoying a larger extension of what, to them, is a hobby. But the average
gardener is not spending money on staff wages, insurance, thousands of
pounds on compost and water rates; working in rain and freezing cold in
glasshouses or outdoors with a short half hour for lunch and then having
people moan if a plant is raised by 50p from one year to the next when
they're already reasonably priced! We have mercifully few customers who do
this but the ones that do I could cheerfully strangle. I see my husband and
my stepson working almost from dawn to dusk some days and then some idiot
groans because a plant has been potted on so has to be more expensive. Why?
Because that involves new pot, new compost, more labour. Why wouldn't a
plant breeder be allowed to make money out of his work? I'm sure you do. Or
don't you think you own your own living things - your brain, your hands?
Would you allow someone else use of them or your expertise and training
without payment?

Phew! Sorry about that! ;-)
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

"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
--

In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| A living thing is as much a commodity as anything else. Race horse owners
| shouldn't be paid if their mare produces a promising foal or their stallion
| covers a good brood mare? The semen straws cattle breeders send abroad
| should be free?

Let us say that I am a pigopoloist, and turn up demanding royalties
from you for every rose you sell, because I have retrospectively
patented the genus Rosa. That isn't far off what has been going
on, and what the extortionists want more of.

I wish that I were joking :-(


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

(Nick Maclaren) wrote:


I am referring to the disgraceful way in which USA pigopolists
have been permitted to patent naturally occurring organisms,

Delurking briefly.... amen brother!

I'm a member of the Seed Saver's Exchange, whose mission is to preserve all
those tried but true varieties the big money folks would like us to abandon
in favor of their patented GM hybrids! At the moment, big money rules even
more than usual here.... I'm hoping for a change come election time.
(And no, this isn't the proper forum for politics, especially U.S., so
let's not veer that way!)

Clearly Big Business would like to have control of all of the food supply,
third world or not. At least the Common Market has mostly been rejecting
our FrankenFood. But there's a lot of money involved....

Peace from the (former) American colonies,


Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at www.albany.net/~gwoods
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Sacha wrote in news:BCB6C1E8.1A522%
:

Would you allow someone else use of them or your expertise and training
without payment?

Actually, yes, I do, often. Not to the point of destitution, but to the
point of helping someone out. So do you, I've noticed ;-).

I don't think the racehorse argument stacks up: you can't copy a racehorse,
you can only charge stud fees (I think that's more like selling seed).

I didn't mean to say that Hill House should not register its plants, and
certainly not to imply that running a nursery was free or even cheap!

I said that patenting a living thing is a different matter to patenting a
gadget.

I still think that.

As cloning becomes more widespread and more and more information of every
type moves into the private domain, I think we are going to see this sort
of debate more often!

Victoria

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

Nick Maclaren29/4/04 2:59


In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| A living thing is as much a commodity as anything else. Race horse owners
| shouldn't be paid if their mare produces a promising foal or their stallion
| covers a good brood mare? The semen straws cattle breeders send abroad
| should be free?

Let us say that I am a pigopoloist, and turn up demanding royalties
from you for every rose you sell, because I have retrospectively
patented the genus Rosa. That isn't far off what has been going
on, and what the extortionists want more of.

I wish that I were joking :-(

I understand what you're getting at now and do remember reading something
about it a while ago. Now that truly IS disgraceful, I agree. Patenting
yew trees so as to cream off Tamoxifen (?) profits would be a horrible
example. I'm not at all clear as to why this is being allowed, though.

--

Sacha
(remove the weeds to email me)

Victoria Clare29/4/04 3:10
3

Sacha wrote in news:BCB6C1E8.1A522%
:

Would you allow someone else use of them or your expertise and training
without payment?

Actually, yes, I do, often. Not to the point of destitution, but to the
point of helping someone out. So do you, I've noticed ;-).

Yes but that does remain within the realms of *our choice*.

I don't think the racehorse argument stacks up: you can't copy a racehorse,
you can only charge stud fees (I think that's more like selling seed).

Well, we talk about 'mother plants' when we talk about breeding and
propagating plants under PBR and in that sense, there's little difference.
The breeder of the plant/horse either finds a lucky sport/foal or carefully
crossbreeds two plants/horses to get the desired result.

I didn't mean to say that Hill House should not register its plants, and
certainly not to imply that running a nursery was free or even cheap!

I said that patenting a living thing is a different matter to patenting a
gadget.

I think that there we shall have to disagree.

I still think that.

As cloning becomes more widespread and more and more information of every
type moves into the private domain, I think we are going to see this sort
of debate more often!

I'm sure. Nick has raised a very interesting point, for example. But
cloning animals or plants is not the same as setting out to breed (by X-ing)
new varieties.
--

Sacha
(remove the weeds to email me)

"Sue da Nimm" . wrote in message
...
snip

All the labels at our local centres say "Propagation illegal without a
licence"

[Someone has to say it - and we have already seen one variant]

When I was a lad my girlfriend's mother used to attach the self same label
to her every Saturday night :-)

"Victoria Clare" wrote in message after...
Sacha wrote
Would you allow someone else use of them or your expertise and training
without payment?

Actually, yes, I do, often. Not to the point of destitution, but to the
point of helping someone out. So do you, I've noticed ;-).

I don't think the racehorse argument stacks up: you can't copy a
racehorse,
you can only charge stud fees (I think that's more like selling seed).

I didn't mean to say that Hill House should not register its plants, and
certainly not to imply that running a nursery was free or even cheap!

I said that patenting a living thing is a different matter to patenting a
gadget.

I still think that.


I have bred for my own interest/fun various plants, Irises for example, and
understand how long it can take to even get some to flowering (when you
often chuck them away) , if one was to try to do it commercially why can't
the person that has spent so much time, effort and money have some
protection from the pirate that simply buys a few plants and micropropagates
millions. If it's allowed to continue then there won't be the incentive or
money to continue to breed new plants.
It's just like the music and video pirates, it's plain theft.

--
Regards
Bob

Use a useful Screen Saver...
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
and find intelligent life amongst the stars

In article ,
(Robert E A Harvey) wrote:

Stick to native wildflowers, and you won't go wrong.

Until someone patents them!

Steve Harris - Cheltenham - Real address steve AT netservs DOT com
A useful bit of gardening software at http://www.netservs.com/garden/

Let us say that I am a pigopoloist, and turn up demanding royalties
from you for every rose you sell, because I have retrospectively
patented the genus Rosa. That isn't far off what has been going
on, and what the extortionists want more of.

Our statute reads:
"Whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new
variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly
found seedlings, other than a tuber propagated plant or plant found in an
uncultivated state, may obtain a plant patent therefore"

Few plants are worthy enough to make the investments necessary to obtain,
market and protect the patented material.

Cheers from sunny New England,
Mark

In article ,
IntarsiaCo wrote:
Let us say that I am a pigopoloist, and turn up demanding royalties
from you for every rose you sell, because I have retrospectively
patented the genus Rosa. That isn't far off what has been going
on, and what the extortionists want more of.

Our statute reads:
"Whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new
variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly
found seedlings, other than a tuber propagated plant or plant found in an
uncultivated state, may obtain a plant patent therefore"

Few plants are worthy enough to make the investments necessary to obtain,
market and protect the patented material.

Cheers from sunny New England,

I am jealous :-(

But, to answer your question: jojoba and neem.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

".............. 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.
............"

Sorry Victoria but I can't agree. There's no way that having Plant Breeders
Rights(PBR) on a plant are going to hinder it's sales overseas, in fact it
can work the other way, If I knew that if I could import a plant from say
Australia and thanks to PBR I would be the only one licensed to grow it in
the UK I would be much more interested than going to all the expense of
importing it and just hoping that there wont be another 100 growers offering
it within a year from the plants they had bought in the first year.
The fact that a nursery finds it to expensive to go through all the
rigmarole of phyto sanitary certificates etc to export one or two plants is
not really surprising

David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk

I think this statement needs clarifying
"........ "Whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any
distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants,
hybrids, and newly found seedlings, other than a tuber propagated plant or
plant found in an uncultivated state, may obtain a plant patent therefore
..........."

This refers to plants propagated by producing a lot of individual tubers,
such as Potatoes and not to plants that can be propagated from cuttings and
then produce a tuber such as Dahlias.
Don't be confused by Canna Lilies, apart from not being Lilies also don't
produce a "Tuber" despite this description being used for their fleshy root
structure, more correctly it is a rhizome.

--
David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk