Strange. The patents claim "new and unique" for these varieties.
I wonder what this means for people who have been saving seed on this variety previous to the patent. Or even after the patent.
I've never known it to be illegal to propagate seed for one's own use, excepting GMOs.

You could always send a letter to the patent office iforming them that it is an heirloom variety and in the public domain. They would probably cancel the patent.

I think it's wrong to patent any living being. It's different if it's a piece of technology or other man-made thing that needs humans to copy it, but living things copy themselves (it's part of the definition of life!), so it just doesn't make sense to me to patent something like that.

This is timely for me because this subject actually came up during my family's Christmas dinner! And actually, the dish I brought was sweet potatoes I grew myself this year. I had a mixture of different colors, which brought up the subject of heirloom vegetables, and my sister-in-law actually asked about patenting varieties since she heard something about it somewhere.

Last I heard, you can patent varieties, but that means you can copy it for your own use but can't sell or distribute the copies (basically the exact same way it works for music; it's legal to buy a CD and make a copy of it for your car, but not to give or sell the copy to someone else). You can also breed it with some other variety to create a new variety and sell that, because the patent wouldn't cover the new variety.

With GMO's, it's not just the variety that's patented, it's the individual genes, so you can't hybridize it with something else and sell the something else, because then the new hybrid would still have the patented genes. And I think maybe you can't even copy it for your own use.

And I'm sure agrobusiness is lobbying hard to make these laws even more restrictive.

The Supreme Court really opened a heck of a Pandora's Box when they decided you could patent life forms and genes.

I still don't understand gene patents. Patents are for inventions and since genes are not invented they shouldn't be patented... period.....If a person discovers a new species, they can't patent it because they didn't invent it. So why genes?

There was a variety mahon sold by the SC foundation seed. It has been renamed Bradshaw now and is available from Heavenly seed and possibly still SC seed foundadtion. I wonder if the mahon is the same variety at all since it is being patended by a MR. Mahon. I can't help but wonder if there are the same name for two different sweet potatoes.

Robert

duckcreekgardens, I completely agree with you. Sure, we manipulate domestic plants and animals in certain ways, but it's not like we created them from scratch.

So far I haven't heard of any genes that humans have created from scratch. The only genetic engineering I've heard of so far is taking genes from one species and splicing them into another species. The field is advancing very fast, though, so it may only be a matter of time.

Am I going to have to patent my own genes before I have children, before someone else gets the chance to patent some genes I might be carrying? Don't want to end up copying someone's patented genes and getting sued!

Anyway, sorry, getting off topic. I'm pretty sure that still, with patented varieties, it just means the person/company holding the patent is the only one who can sell it. That would apply to the sweet potato in question. You can grow it yourself, but if you owned a nursery, you couldn't grow slips of it and sell them at your nursery.

I don't have any problem with it.

It costs a lot of money to breed plants and test all the crosses. If someone wants to devote a lot of time and money to it, fine, let them get some of it back.

If you do not allow the patenting of plants, you are going to effectively stop the introduction of new varieties, with the exception of some of the university programs where the research is paid for by tax payer dollars.

Plant patents expire fairly quickly and then the plant is in the public domain. So either pay the extra $1.25 to get it now, or wait a couple of years and save your $1.25.

The genes that are getting patents are gene slices and I doubt that many of you on this forum have the skill or equipment to do any gene splicing. Again, very expensive and it has to be paid for in some way or another.

I'm with smoke on this - if the grower created a new or much better variety. If the Stokes people were growing a cultivar of a standard SP and decided to name it Stokes Purple and then get a patent on it, some bureaucrat must have got paid off or is just plain incompetent.

DuckCreek shoul know - IIRC, he is really into growing sweet potatoes.

Mike

Please don't get me wrong I am totally supportive of someone that has gone to all the work of breeding and selecting out of hundreds or 1000's of seedlings and taking years to make sure they have a superior "New and Distinctive" plant getting a patent. I respect and highly applaud their efforts. example: I think that most of the crape myrtle varieties that Dr Carl Whitcomb (lacebarkinc.com) has developed deserve a patent, and on and on...Many deserving patents out there. I am an amateur plant breeder myself and know how time consuming it is to get a new and distinctive plant.

Universities develop many new and distinctive varieties of edible plants paid for by you and I through tax dollars. However, they are now patenting all of them. I would love to get a license to grow the "Covington" Sweet Potato patented by North Carolina, but I am a small time player and I can't even think about affording the licensing fees. which is not the same as royalties. This is totally against the mission of the Land Grant College in my opinion...As an ex extension agent myself I am appalled by the way things are digressing with their intended mission.

I am trying to get a license with LSU to grow Evangeline but here again, it will probably be reserved for the huge growers that plant hundreds of thousand of plants. We'll see. BTW, Evangeline is a very nice sweetpotato, better than beauregard for sure.
But read these patents, and you see in the description that someone got a sweetpotato that was unknown to them, they grew it out over two or three seasons had it virus indexed and now they think they deserve a patent? That does not make it a "New and Distinctive" cultivar.
This is the stoke's Purple>>>>
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/PP17976.html

didn't have time to find Mahon

they also claim that it was the only Purple Skin-Purple Flesh known to them. they should have done a bit more research and they would have found that there are several such varieties. Patent officers don't have the time to research every patent applications so will let just about anything through. If the person wants to file a patent infringement, it would be up to the courts to decide.
Shoot, I have grown several varieties many many years and always select the best seed stock. Do I deserve a Patent? Absolutely not, It just makes me a conservator. I was proud to bring back an heirloom sweetpotato called Cordner's Red. It was gone from everyone's memory until I found an old farmer that had maintained it since the 1950's. It was almost extinct. It is very distinctive and definitely "New" to the Market anyway. No one would have know any different, if I said I developed it by growing it two or three seasons. Should I have patented it?

BTW Patents last 20 years from the time the application was submitted.

And as an limited offer, If someone can get some of the patented Mahon, I will give them about three named "Heirloom" varieties, that I think are identical to grow out side by side for a trial. I don't want the patented one even near my place for obvious reasons.

I have to disagree with those who think patenting plants is fine. Trying to patent living things is unrealistic and inviting a minefield of problems... what happens when patented crops from one farm are cross-pollinated with a neighboring farmer's crops, or escape there via runners/rodents/etc.? Patented genes show up in his fields, even though he never intended for that to happen. He gets sued by the patent holder and penalized in court, with no way to conclusively prove he did nothing wrong. Nature and life are not contained the same way that technology is... they reproduce themselves without (or despite) our efforts.

The US patent office is broken and is used by corporations to impede innovation and competition. The patent office frequently grants patents for existing technology, processes, and things based on the applicants presentations. A cursory search would find pre-existing work. Unless the patent is opposed, it is granted. Worse, the patent is considered valid until it is overturned even if it should never have been granted.

Whoever can afford the best lawyer wins. There are companies in the US who do nothing but file or buy patents and sue other companies.