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.

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 :-)

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.

If they had not done that, you would NOT have seen a comparable
jump in profit, neither in the short term nor the long.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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)

In article ,
Sacha writes:
|
| 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.

Which is why there were so few new varieties developed before that
law was passed? Oh, come now!

| 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.

That is true.

| 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.

No, I have never expressed it on Usenet, let alone on this group.
It is not what you think, and the reason I have never posted it
is that my views on the matter are too complex and philosophical
for such a medium.

| 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.

Yes, I am. What you say is true, but you are assuming that all 144
people really want that variety - and remember that the context was
that it was being sold as an UNNAMED variety. I doubt that, of those
144, more than a dozen would buy the named variety if they had not
bought the unnamed one in a charity sale.

| 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.

Oh, yes, quite agreed. That is a very fair summary.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Thanks all.

Sounds like I can get on with potting up my surpluses.

I'n not planning to take cuttings of anything that I know to be a specific
named, protected variety, or sell any plants as named types, but, for
example, I know I have at least four different 'named varieties' of
strawberry plant in the garden, plus a couple of things which probably had
names once but not by the time I got them.

Given the habits of strawberry plants and the regrettable inattention I
have paid them over the last 8 months ;-), I have no idea which the ones
that have generously planted themselves all the way down my bark path are.

I'm fairly sure one of the varieties had a label threatening winged monkeys
of death (or similar), but I don't know which one is which.

Now I know that no-one is likely to be checking, or bothered about it, I
can just mark them 'strawberry' (which will at least be accurate, if brief)
and leave it at that.

Now I think about it, I think the 'winged monkey' protected strawberry was
also described as an old French variety.

Surely it can't be a traditional variety and a protected genetic variant
???

Victoria

In article . 10,
Victoria Clare wrote:

Now I think about it, I think the 'winged monkey' protected strawberry was
also described as an old French variety.

Surely it can't be a traditional variety and a protected genetic variant
???

That is precisely what I was referring to as bogus claims. There is
(in general) no law in the UK against false advertising, false claims
of legal constraints and so on. And it is a hell of a lot cheaper to
make such claims than it is to do the work to justify them!

For example, "shrink-wrap licences", most of the Web pages that say
"By clicking on the button, you accept ..." are void in law. There
is no valid contract, and therefore no licence. But there is no
law against making a claim that there is, and precious little against
actually persecuting you on bogus grounds.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article , Sacha
writes
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.

I think you're both agreed on that. But what Nick seems to be saying is
that just because someone has illicitly propagated and sold 1000 plants
doesn't mean to say you have lost 1000 sales. Not all of those who
bought the 1000 plants would otherwise have approached you, by mail
order or otherwise.

You could argue that you have lost 1000 'royalties' ... except that, had
the other guy been licensed, he'd probably have had to sell the plants
at a higher price to cover that, and so may only have sold 850 of them,
not 1000 ;-)


--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"