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The Professional Gardener

I have a propagating license question.

15 years ago

I have several plants that I would love to progagate to sell, but they have patents on them or you have to have a special license to propagate certain plants. How do I get the license to propagate these and do I have to have a seperate license for each of these plants?

Thanks,

Elly

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Comments (2)

rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
15 years ago
Each asexually propagated (patented) plant will come with a special tag. You can look up the patent information by doing a search on the patent number listed. You then apply to the patent holder for licensing agreements.

I assume that you're talking about asexual propagation, right?
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calliope
15 years ago
In general to get rights to do propagation, you'll have to be doing more than a couple for a company to consider granting a license to you. Most companies turn their patent administering over to a Royalty administration company and they send inspectors out to your facility on a fairly frequent basis to check for infringements and that you are complying with their requirements. That is also who you pay our royalties to.

It's not going to be very cost effective to do this for onsie-twosies. It is for onsie-twosie thousand plants. I used to hold a license for one breeder and after a few years let it drop, because my production was so low on that item I felt guilty making them make the effort.

If you deal regularly with some brokers and place an order on patented material, they used to ask you at time of order placement if you intended to do any cuttings from them. Otherwise your license was for finishing off cuttings only and your patent fees were added on to the cost of the plant order. I haven't had that question broached to me in years, so assume it's not as common as it used to be. I suspect it's because the breeders are going to rooting stations and granting very limited propagating rights to 'tie-up' availability and keep profits up.

You'd have to have a pretty exotic specimen to get a breeder to bother with very small amounts, and in those cases the breeding fees can be steep. I know I did some grafting this winter, and instead of the five/seven cent royalty fee, it was more like five dollars a cut, whether it lived or not.
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