The newly released Red Nules (pigmented version of Clemenules) from CCPP have exclusivity arrangement with Willits and Newcomb and Future Fruit, LLC.

The way the patented Red Nules are executed is that only Willits and Newcomb Nursery can propagate the Red Nules, and only Contract Growers can plant those trees. The Contract growers cannot sell the fruits to anybody, but only to Future Fruit, LLC or to whomever Future Fruit decides to sell those fruits. This means that as a contract grower, you will never own the trees, even long after the plant patents have expired. So in effect, no contract grower can own the trees as long as the contract growing and exclusivity arrangement are in effect. But after the patent expires, I think it could be propagated by anybody and the contract growers are still stuck of not owning the trees in their land. Thanks to greedy lawyers.

So at this point, this means that Future Fruit is the sole monopolistic dictator of whatever price they want to sell the Red Nules to the market, having made exclusive arrangement with UCR CCPP.

If UCR CCPP are the patent holders of Red Nules, then they would have developed it and have not just grabbed it from other countries upon the prodings of any individual or company such as Future Fruit, LLC. In fact any imported fruit cultivars from abroad that are quarantined by USDA and UCR CCPP are in theory are not patentable by anybody in the US due to previous literature or existing plants. Except of course those individuals that developed those cultivars and wanted US patents.

Another is that the patents could not be owned by UCR CCPP, unless UCR CCPP bought the plant patents. So I really doubt that Future Fruit, LLC have suggested to grab the Red Nules from anybody abroad and then have UCR CCPP own the patent. There would be a lot of previous literature about the cultivar and hence Red Nules would not be a patentable cultivar.

So owning that Red Nules patent could only mean that either UCR CCPP bought the ownership to the Red Nules patent from someone abroad or they have really developed the cultivar. Most likely they developed the cultivar, and seizing upon the opportunity of how potentially hot the item could be, the lawyers of Future Fruit, LLC may have crafted such exclusivity agreement and "convinced" the University into signing with a promise of bigger royalty pay-offs. Much as I have great friends at UC and did a lot of volunteer work for its sake, and helping some funds to support the university, I abhor and hate these exlusivity agreements granted by publicly funded institution to the profit business enterprises.

Us tax paying public who funded in part the UCR CCPP are on the fleecing end of this bargain. It is alright for university to own patents and earn funding from them to support the same cause for the benefit of the general public as our government are ever cutting off the research funding. They can collect patent royalties, but there is a limit that I'd draw the line here. There should not be exclusivity agreement promulgated by publicly funded institutions to the detriment of the demanding public. This promotes monopolistic anti-competitive behavior for increasing profits by leaps and unlimited bounds as greediness, and isn't that what got Microsoft into trouble?