Rob, your general outline of the patent/trademark law is correct as I understand it. I'm not a lawyer but non-propagation agreements are difficult to enforce and thats why commercial breeders usually only use them for limited circulation to testers they personally are interacting with. Greenmantle is the only nursery that uses them for heirloom varieties so I assume they are the place you are talking about. If I were to say pick up some of their varieties in a pile I found at a random swap meet, Greenmantle has no recourse unless they could hire a detective and track down who brought them to the swap. They certainly can't go after me, I have not violated the agreement since I didn't sign it. That is why non-propagation agreements are not very powerful legal tools. My general opinion of Greenmantle is low, not only for their arm-twisting tactics on these old varieties which they have no legal ownership of, but for selling bench grafts that often die. They sent me a benchgraft with the scraggliest rootstock you have ever seen, it had only one thread of a root. Of course it died. Then when I asked for a refund they got all huffy and said I overwatered it (I didn't water it at all, it was spring and plenty moist). They did eventually refund my money. Scott

'Dwarf North Star' was created by the University of Minnesota in 1950. 'Compact Stella' was released in the early 1970's. So, both of these cultivars can be freely propagated. Below is a link to Patent Genius. It is one tool that can be used to search for patented plants. There are also others, but I think this one is easiest. I won't go into how to use the site (search functions, etc), but I think you will find it easy too. If a plant isn't listed here, its either not patented or very very new and still pending. One thing you have to keep in mind is that you must be sure you are using the cultivar name (not a marketing/trade/trademarked name). Here is a link that might be useful: Plant Patents at Patent Genius

From what I have been reading since original post, all of the columnar apple varieties are descended from a sport mutation of McIntosh, called McIntosh Wijcik. Crossed with any other apple variety, and you get roughly one half columnar and roughly one half normal progeny. The columnar mutation has been traced to a single gene. First generation hybrids have 1/2 McIntosh in their makeup. In subsequent generations that dilutes out. The Ballerina series, for example, descend from Wijick. They appear to be trademarked, Im notsure about patent. The only reason I want to use it is I have one in my yard already and would like another. I like to play with grafting and they are too expensive to buy another one just for novelty. They really arent that great an apple, but they make a handsome specimen tree as they age, especially with judicious pruning of the longer spurs. Wijcik was discovered in 1961 by an orchardist of that name. The patent was filed in 1978 by Starks. The original Wijcik was around so long before being patented, there might have been opportunity for development of multiple new strains before the original was marketed, and even after that. None of them seem to show up on a Best Flavor list. They are just a novelty. One progeny was Golden Sentinel. That was being trialed in 1996 in Canada - where Wijcik originated- but I think NorthPole is older. I am pretty sure my North Pole tree is at least 15 years old, and I doubt it was one of the early ones. I would be curious to see what happens with crossing these with an ornamental, disease resistant crab, like Prairie Fire. Select the columnar, red leaved seedlings... Probably small sour fruit with red flesh. But it would look cool.

Good info and I'm not sure I can contribute much, further, but for another source of such information: Manners, M.M. 1999. Rose registration: Cultivar names, code names, and selling names. p. 117124. In: S. Andrews, A. Leslie, and C. Alexander (eds.), Taxonomy of cultivated plants. Third Int. Symp. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. Malcolm