I didn't read the link, but I can add a few thoughts. Yes, it is perfectly legal and increasingly common to patent plants. The caveats are: the patent protects only asexual propagation [i.e. cuttings/divisions] - so you can keep any seed, sow it, and start selling the plants for whatever price you want as soon as they germinate. Further, it only protects asexual propagation at a commercial level, so if you want to take a cutting and start a plant for your neighbor, no problem. If you start 500 cuttings and try to sell them to Home Depot, you might have a lawyer knocking at your door.
This all started, well, I'm not sure when, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, when plant breeding and marketing really got going. Breeders and growers wanted some way to protect their investment, so that if they spend 3 years and XXX dollars to develope a really neat plant, they don't want the competition to go out, buy a few plants for $3, and then next spring have 10,000 cuttings for sale. So, if they're doing it legally, they buy either the cuttings, or the "right-to-propagate" from the breeder, such that they can make some money on their investment. If you go into any high-end garden center, or even Home Depot for that matter, you will see this on a lot of the "high-end" color or foliage plants [I can't thing of any of the trademarked names right now, but names LIKE "Breeder's Best" or "Hot Tropics" and similar are likely to be protected in this way] But again, for the average home-owner, it is almost meaningless.

I have not considered this issue before with regard to houseplants - I am more familiar with the issue of patenting of food plants (primarily grains) by the giants of agribusiness like Cargill and ADM, who want to claim propriety over strains of the very DNA of organisms.

I am not sure how useful a protection patenting might be for small scale growers/hybridizers, but I can tell you that I could not care less about the large business that go to every extreme and whatever measures necessary to secure their interests.

Well, several years ago the cost of patenting a plant could run $4,000 - $10,000, so no, your "Uncle Joe's Plants" will not be patenting some random snapdragon or something that came up in the back-40, unless it is truly unique, and they have the backing of a large grower who thinks it is a worth-while investment.
Also, I might add that contrary to my previous post, technically, legally, it may well be a "crime" to propagate that "one plant for your neighbor", but like any thing in life, is the grower going to spend $1000 on a lawyer to sue you for $2.95? Probably not.
I am not sure how this compares to the agriculture side of things trying to protect "strains of DNA" Does this mean you are prohibited from even cross-pollinating plants? Believe it or not, I think now they actually insert a "terminator" gene [is that the right term?] such that while the plant may produce delicious corn/wheat, etc., it is actually sterile, so the farmers are forced to buy another batch of seed the next season. Pretty crazy stuff.
Just wait till the fertility clinics start patenting "Blonde hair #317" and "Aquamarine Eyes #12" !!!
:)

I actually read a plant patent awhile back that stipulated that the plant could not be used in the propagation of new plants, meaning pollen and seeds were also covered.

I asked a guy in the business about plant patents. He told me that he held the patent on a shrub, I can't remember the name or type, but anyway he walked into a Walmart and found 30 of them, then he went to another Walmart, and found more, he visited 5 in northern Ohio, and all of them had the shrubs. He took a tag, which even had his patent number on it and checked with his accountant, guess what, the licensing fees had never been paid. His Lawyers contacted Walmart and the grower involved, and eventully he got paid. He told me that they figured that by using tags with the patent number on them no one would ever check. He told me that it cost him close to $300,000.00 to develop, propagate, patent and market that shrub. I no longer see him, the family forced the sale of the business, to settle his parents estate or I would ask what it was.

Neilzibub is right too, almost all the new grain and corn varieties being developed and marketed are sterile, so the farmers will have to buy seed every year.

I thought they took the terminator out of all the crops because it was killing Monarchs or something along those lines. They've actually had a lot of problems with cross pollination and DNA from GE crops showing up in non-GE plants. I did a research paper on genetic alteration of crops last year and I think I had a couple pages on that...but at the rate all this stuff moves the info was probably outdated a week later. I knew about the large scale agro crops but the whole house plant thing just kind of caught me off guard.

Farmers here are busy burying plants like that .. a DNA experiment turned nightmare...problem is they are not sure that turning in to mulch will get rid of it..As for buying patented plants I avoid them like a plague..all my broms have names and credit given to the hybridizer on their tags but I propagate them

Wow, Bambi, that IS pretty scary. What was the plant that you couldn't use the pollen or seed? That honestly seems too hard to believe...So is the breeder going to sue a bumble bee or hummingbird if it pollinates the plant growing in my backyard? Or am I responsable for killing any and all pollinators prior? I mean, I'm being sarcastic of course, but really, what happens? And how in the heck would you prove that? "Oh, your begonia looks like my patented begonia, I think maybe you used pollen from my patented plant. I'm going to run a paternity test and sue you!" C'mon, there's got to be a patent lawyer on this forum...

Bullis Bromiliads patents a bunch of theirs.

You also can actually search the patent page, here's a link this happens to be to Hibiscus, but you can change it. In Hibiscus, the Fleming Brothers hold patents on H. rosa-sinensis x H. moscheutos - considering it's a genetically impossible cross is interesting.
Patented plants

Here is anoter thought..I have seen this happen on patented plants...growers just change the name and sell it unregisitered and no patent....how would you prove it was your patented plant..run a DNA test?

I know zilch about what you folks are talking about,but it sure is interesting,and I learned a whole lot.
Good posts !
Bob

ps; I've been on six juries in my time,and one thing I learned there. If there is a lot of $$$ to be made illeagally,its worth the risk of getting caught if the fine for the offense is just a fraction of the profit you've made. I knew the prison guard for Willy Sutton,the notorious bank robber,who told me that one Judge asked him at sentencing, "Mr.Sutton,why do you keep on robbing banks?"
To which he replied,"Because that's where they keep the money"

You probably do have some patented broms, HDD. I think there are a number of them, including Neo. carolinae Tricolor 'Perfecta'. I don't know of any enforcing that goes on with the propagation of that thing-- just about everyone has it. 'Ultima' is patented but I didn't find that out until after I bought a pup at a convention. There was no tag saying that, and it hasn't stopped me from selling pups either. I don't think anyone is going to go after the small grower, so I don't worry about it.

I seem to remember hearing that Neo. carolinae 'Mother' had a patent covering not only it but also all of its offspring, making it illegal to use any of them for breeding. 'Mother' itself is seldom seen; the people who have it don't seem inclined to share it, but its babies are everywhere, so I don't know how you can control that.

We grow a lot of Globbas too, and several years ago we tried to purchase some corms of the 'Jungle Jewels' series, which are patented. This in and of itself seemed odd to me because I had always assumed that a patented plant had to be a hybrid or sport or a GMO of some sort, but these are wild-collected species, so how can anyone hold a patent on them? At any rate, the grower/patentholder (who happens to be a friend of my husband's) gave us a stern lecture about not propagating them, and when Ken told him we wanted to try them as cut flowers he said no, we couldn't do that either! He never did send us the plants, I guess he figured we weren't to be trusted, LOL! Fortunately for us, we already had a couple of unpatented clones of that same species that we like better anyway, so we'll stick with those.

Renaming and selling patented plants goes on all the time, sadly. From what I've heard pretty much all of the major tissue culture labs are guilty of this. David Shiigi had a lawsuit over a lab that released his Guz. 'Puna Gold' under another name. I don't know what the outcome of that suit was, but it's hardly an isolated incident.

It's funny about this, as we knew "Patumma" which was occured here in Thailand
from a slected clone of Curcuma altismatifolia, that is our native ginger family,
but has been patened by a Dutch company !

Talk about Globba, Thailand is also one of the most abundant source in the world.
Actually, my country plays a major role a home for one of
the world most diversified Ginger floras : 300 + species.

For example, this is a wild unknown species called in our market "White Dragon"
which said to be brought from Burma !

{{gwi:478010}}

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In Chatuchak Plant Market, Bangkok City, Thailand, one can find
even an undescribed species! which was collected and sold in a local herbal shop like this.
{{gwi:478012}}

This is an unknown which look like Zingiber barbatum, but different in flower structures.
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A striking wild Curcuma sp. from north western of Thailand.
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Thanks for the ginger pictures, Stephania! I like the red Curcuma and that Zingiber is really unusual. We have quite a collection of Zingibers but I've never seen that one.

There are still many undescribed Globba species, including some of the more popular commercial varieties, but 'White Dragon' has been identified as G. magnifica. That was one of the parents used to make 'Blue Hawaii'. Now, I could patent THAT if I had the money....

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