No, patenting a plant is not at all ridiculous. It take a whole lot of money to develop and release a new plant cultivar, and the only way for the inventor of that new plant to get that money back is to protect it through a patent. What you may not realize is that for each of those patented lantana plants that is sold, there's a royalty tacked on that goes back to the patent holder. If there were no patent, anybody could sell it (you have to be licensed to sell patented plants) and the patent holder wouldn't be able to recoup their investment. And then there would be no financial incentive to create new plant cultivars.

Why is it any different to patent a plant than it is to patent a piece of electronic equipment or a new pharmaceutical? Sure, plants are living organisms, but it takes money to make new types of plants just like it takes money to come up with new gadgets or new cancer drugs.

Anyway, it's probably ok to take those plants into the nursing home. The patent is really concerned with plants being sold...and besides, the patent holder isn't going to sue you for propagating a flat. Now, if you propagated a few thousand, and tried to sell them, then you might find yourself being sued.

Hi fruitgirl! Thank you for your perspective on this one - it makes sense, though I wouldn't think this could be compared to electronics or pharmaceuticals.

In fact, one of the main reasons the FDA won't touch herbal supplements and homeopathic remedies is because the plant materials and plants themselves cannot be patented in that way. Which, to me would be the wrong reason if there is a specific one that could genuinely help people.

Hybridizing different flowers for color or fragrance for the sake of money and monopoly is a concept that seems so foreign to me...

BUT... I can see it from your point of view and suppose if I went through the time and expense of trying to create a new cultivar of a plant it would be nice to get my investment back some how.. I do still think it's somewhat silly though.

This type of thing is all around us.

For example, the song "Happy Birthday" is still under copyright. Someone owns the string of words, and the string of musical notes. Don't worry. It is legal to sing it at your next birthday, but if you sing it on TV or in a movie without paying, their lawyers will come after you.

When Intel came out with the '286, the '386, and the '486 CPU chips then other companies like AMD, Cyrix, and others, came out with chips labeled with exactly the same part number. And their chips were cheaper.

So Intel named their next chip "Pentium" instead of '586. Since Intel owned that string of 7 letters none of the other companies could use it. This simple act put all of the other companies out of the CPU business, except for AMD.

But don't worry, you can still name your dog or your child Pentium, if you want.

Even colors can be protected. I haven't looked it up, but I'm pretty sure you can't paint your home improvement store Home Depot Orange, or put Golden Arches on the door of your restaurant.

Almost anything can be protected, to keep other businesses at bay. They can even protect plants, genes, and so forth, for a period of time. But the copyright for "Happy Birthday" is set to expire in 2030. Then, even though someone invented it, it will be public domain, and they can't stop anyone who wants to, from using it for any purpose they want.

Everything goes into the public domain eventually.

One of the ironies of the Plant Patent Act was that the first plant patent issued (Rose 'New Dawn') was for a reblooming sport of 'Dr. W. Van Fleet' that grew up from the root of a plant that had been trampled. Not much work involved in "developing" that one. In fact, during the early years following the P.P. Act, many rose sports were patented, even though the originals might not have been.

Even before plant patents, breeders could copyright the names of their productions. Just today I came across a list of seed-grown plants that Luther Burbank copyrighted in 1915. Or maybe he was copyrighting the seed packets rather than the seeds.

Actually, the Patent Office was registering strains of corn (maize) back in the 19th century, but I don't know what sort of protection this gave. Anderson and Brown mentioned this fact without detail.

Karl

Here is a link that might be useful: Origin of Corn Belt Maize and Its Genetic Significance