You are a thief and major law breaker if you propagate one tree! How dare anyone justify stealing. I spent 20 years on getting to the final patent issue and 30,000 USD for fees, attorneys, 3 years of secure testing and the patent was 2 years of time being issued. It is NOT just 'mother nature'! Then finding an honest wholesale nursery to deal with, negotiating royalties, travel expenses to nurseries, attorneys, testing facilities and even more attorney fees. I have years of research and now patent infringement costs as I will sue anyone, even those that make even one copy illegally. If you don't want to pay the extra price then don't buy it! The lawsuit will not be for a dollar either! Courts in the US will not care who you are and fines are large as are my attorney fees you will also pay. Also, most of the 'true fact, statements in this thread are incorrect. Read the patent laws if you are not too lazy. Honestly, after reading this thread I have no desire to release my other plants that I am going to patent. Most royalties are pennies and if you are so fortunate to hit the perfect tree, release it when the economy is good or no droughts, then you deserve the higher dollars! i didn't even mention the different countries require different "patents" $$$$ and countries such as Mexico and China steal the trees by not enforcing patent infringement so we loose out on many big markets. i don't steal from you. Try exhibiting some integrity and honesty towards all.

I don't think it's anything you would have to worry much about kimmie. However if I understood what I was reading correctly, for example with daylilies, if someone actually goes through the trouble to get a patent on a variety then the patent extends to prohibitting all forms of propagation from that plant, be it sexual or asexual. That means no breeding new seed with it even though the offspring will be genetically different. But at the moment most breeders don't patent their daylilies anyway except for a very few so it rarely applies. That's why they will charge $200 for a new introduction and then just don't even worry about people propagating it or breeding with it once they buy it. I'm not sure what's common practice for other plants & species. Danielle

"You could always propagate them sexually, from seed" Not really. As far as I know, if you propagate a hybrid rose from seed, you most likely will NOT get a true clone of the original rose; your seedling from seed is almost surely will be different from the rose you got the seed from. I guess that is the reason why the patent law forbids asexual propagation but it is silent about Âsexual propagation. This corn story is outrageous and bizarre. I haven't heard that! It is also surprising because hybrids-as I mentioned above - usually donÂt come true from seeds. But I admit I know nothing about the Âcloning potential of genetically engineered seeds. Nonetheless, a ban on using seed or pollen of a patented rose in order to create new cultivars would extremely slow down or make breeding of new varieties close to impossible except if the breeder uses old, out of patent specimens. I doubt that hybridizers are required to wait 20 years or more to get a pollen or seed to create a new rose. If you search roses genealogy on HMF, in most cases you will see the 'parentage' registered, namely the seed and the pollen 'parent' mentioned, provided the rose was bred subsequent to the time when precise information became available for the breeders as to how to ID with certainty the parents of their new and hopefully successful creations. I mention only one example. On HMF I just looked up MeillandÂs Bolero (2004, floribunda) that was bred by using the seeds of Kimono (1961) and Sharifa Asma (Ausreef). Sharifa Asma was released in 1989 and is still patented. It was certainly patented when the house of Meilland came out with Bolero, and they obviously had to start breeding Bolero well before the 2004 marketing. I seriously doubt that it was illegal to use SharifaÂs seeds in order to come up with a new hybrid. On the other hand, you can also notice that the parentage of the newest roses by Kordes, Tantau is "undisclosed", not does Austin reveal the bloodline of his newest varieties. I agree with Mgleason. If a retailer, wholesaler or nursery buys exclusive patent rights, it should make the rose available either by propagating the rose in question or allow other nurseries to propagate it. Diane made a good point by saying: "Talk to a hybridizer, see if that changes your mind". Others argued that the breeder would feel awful and cheated if an individual propagates his/her rose without paying royalties. I believe a breeder also wants his roses to be grown in as many gardens and in as many countries as possible and would feel just as bad and just as cheated if someone buys the exclusive right to market his rose but instead buries it. Jack Harkness, an outstanding breeder in his own right, argues that Âwe felt that that a holder of a new variety had some obligation to distribute it to his fellow rose growers, whether he charged for the stock or charged royalties . His comment was made regarding Peace. The Harkness company got two plants of Peace earlier as a present from the American distributor, namely from Robert Pyle. The Harknesses wanted to buy stock from MeillandÂs British agent (patent holder, I guess) who in turn informed them that his company had no stock to spare. So the Harkness firm propagated Peace from the plants they got from Pyle and when MeillandÂs British agent visited them, reports Harkness " I made a point of letting him see our stock of Peace, ready for sale at the same time as his, in 1947" As you can see, in the Harkness incident the issue was not even so critical as it is with Bear Creek aka J&P exclusives from KordesÂ, TantauÂs or otherÂs roses that were pulled from production after a very short period of time and are absolutely unavailable because access for propagation is denied for other US nurseries and import from Canadian nurseries are prohibited. In these cases those who have the specific rose should be able to propagate it or send cuttings to those who want that rose very much. I would penalize the holder of exclusive rights if the 'intent to sell' turns out to be intent to neglect or abuse the contract that gave this person or company exclusive rights. And I would like to see those appreciated who do everything that the specific rose does not become extinct.

Autumn Blaze etc. are selling names (as they call them in Britain) and not the names of the plants. This is what operations so inclined do now, they use one name (the cultivar name) for the plant and then another designation(s*) to sell it - which strictly speaking is not the name of the plant. A partly equivalent example still within the gardening realm is glyphosate herbicide being sold as RoundUp, CleanUp etc. The chemical is glyphosate - for our purposes this would parallel the cultivar - and RoundUp and so on are selling names (in the case of the herbicide it is complicated by it being used in mixtures). Or if is more apt this could be seen to be like gelatine vs. Jello and so on through thousands of brand name products. Because trade names do not actually refer to the plant itself more than one may sometimes be in use by different sources for the same cultivar. Among decorative garden plants this circumstance seems to be recurring among roses in particular. *For instance among items prevalent at garden centers there is the Endless Summer line of hydrangeas wherein a growing assortment of individually distinguished named cultivars - often not necessarily related to one another - are marketed both as members of this trademarked Series as well as with the use of separate trademarks for each. So then the widely grown flagship plant of this scheme - when given the full (or nearly so) treatment - is referred to as Hydrangea macrophylla Endless Summer The Original ('Bailmer'), with Endless Summer being the trademarked Series of hydrangeas, The Original being the trademark being used to sell this particular cultivar, and the cultivar being 'Bailmer'.