Seed availability issues

[dustdevil]

FF, did you check SSE?

[dustdevil]

Originally Posted by dice

"Steal this egg.":-)

Masked ones raiding the henhouse, eh?

[dice]

[Bayh-Dole]

No one was spilling to spend the money to challenge it,
and who knows, it might have been legal (the specific
part of the Constitution or Bill of Rights that it violated
may not have been all that obvious to legal minds working
for public interest groups, looking at it). And who wants to
pick on financially challenged universities, non-profits, and
small business, anyway? In the end it was simply bad public
service, not so much because of what it specifically allowed,
but because of the legal precedent that it set for abuse of
the public trust on a much larger scale.

The Reagan administration's instructions to various federal
agencies that manage research funding for defense, NASA,
et al, on the other hand, did not even have the force of law
behind it. They only had Bayh-Dole for a fairly thin precedent
to cite if those administrative orders were challenged in court.

What that really amounted to was institutionalized overbilling
by the defense, space exploration, and data systems
contractors that acquired patents or copyrights on
proprietary technology developed under federal contract,
a crime that continues more-or-less in perpetuity in each
case, or for as long as the patents are renewed before
they expire.

What I keep wondering is if I cross a promising F3 or F4 with
some commercial hybrid F1 with better than average disease
tolerance, is the eventually stabilized OP no longer commercially
viable, contaminated by possible patent claims based on
whatever genes it retains from the commercial F1? (I can
always grow it myself, of course, and I can probably give seeds
of it away, but can OP seed vendors sell it without fear of
rapacious corporate legal departments descending on them
with subpoenas in hand, even if for nothing more than the legal
fees for an out-of-court settlement?)

[mjc]

Originally Posted by dice

What I keep wondering is if I cross a promising F3 or F4 with
some commercial hybrid F1 with better than average disease
tolerance, is the eventually stabilized OP no longer commercially
viable, contaminated by possible patent claims based on
whatever genes it retains from the commercial F1? (I can
always grow it myself, of course, and I can probably give seeds
of it away, but can OP seed vendors sell it without fear of
rapacious corporate legal departments descending on them
with subpoenas in hand, even if for nothing more than the legal
fees for an out-of-court settlement?)

A couple of things...

If the original F1 was a PVP variety, then no...the PVP law has breeding expemtions built in.

As far as utility patents on plants...there is no renewal on them, so after twenty years from the initial date of issue it is 'free and clear'.

Tomatoes can't be granted plant patents...as plant patents are reserved for asexually propagated plants (cuttings, grafts and clones).

Generally, by the time you get through 7 or so years stabilizing the cross and a couple of years building up support for it (or enough seed) to be able to distribute it to vendors, it is likely that the F1 parent has had its patent/PVP expire.

The plant and utility patents are searchable through the Patent Office.

The PVPs are searchable through

http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/pvplist.pl?

One thing I've run into on more than one occasion is that sometimes vendors represent expired patents/PVPs as still 'active'. Sometimes for several years after they've expired. Also, unless it is specifically stated as being F1, there is a good chance that the item in question is already dehybridized before it is released for sale.

The expiration of a PVP/patent is one of the major reasons for a variety being removed from commercial sales.

[Tormato]

Go away for the weekend, and return to monster of a thread.

I think I'll just wait for Amishland to introduce the extremely rare

Prussian20.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Tormato

Go away for the weekend, and return to monster of a thread.

I think I'll just wait for Amishland to introduce the extremely rare

Prussian20.

Not just extremely rare, but hard to find, and we have the exclusive listing for this from a friend in the CIS who got it from the late estate of the Smirnov family, aka Smirnoff, the original vodka suppliers to the tsars, that's tsars, not stars.

And I mention the Smirnov's b/c I jsut got through reading a book titled The Vodka King about the original Smirnov who was a serf, who freed himself, became an entrepeneur, mingled with the aristocracy, but then the state took over and monopolized vodka which was the main source to the Empire to fund almost everything.

I didn't read it b'c I'm a famed vodka drinker, I read it b'c I'm a Russophile and convinced, ahem, that some of my Swedish ancestors settled somewhere in the former USSR. Maybe I was once a Russian princess? Who knows.

[OneoftheEarls]

I have Spudayellow Strawberry...PM me

Earl

[frogsleap farm]

Originally Posted by OneoftheEarls

I have Spudayellow Strawberry...PM me

Earl

Thanks Earl, PM on the way

[dice]

One other thing on these patents: the whole Bayh-Dole->Reagan
administration debacle could have been (possibly) prevented
just by changing a few details of the law while still providing
financial assistance to its intended targets. If the government
had retained ownership of any patentable or copyrightable
intellectual property developed with federal funding, arranged
to collect licensing fees and royalties for any such discoveries
that would have fallen under the rules for Bayh-Dole assistance,
and then returned those fees to the universities, non-profit
research agencies, and small businesses that developed those
technologies with federal funding, there would have been no
legal precedent for the Reagan administration's wholesale
giveaway of patentable technology developed with federal
funding to Fortune 500 companies and their subsidiaries.

(Of course they might have tried it anyway, but a court
challenge to those administration executive orders and
the like would not have been undermined by the Bayh-Dole
act of 1980.)

[frogsleap farm]

Dice - patent rights, by statute, always belong to the inventors. If the inventors are public employees, the IP rights transfer to their institution, regardless of funding source for the research. All public research institutions have a mechanism for technology transfer, in which they license state/federal IP to commercial organizations, which eventually leads to commercial products embodying the discovery, and benefiting the public. Sale of commercial products then indirectly benefits the inventor and/or public institution, via technology licensing fees, and the licensor. Most public institutions are very savvy about technology licensing, and count on such revenue as a significant funding source. Working for a small company, my limited experience with the Bayh-Dole reforms is positive, it simplified this technology transfer process, making it more likely that the public would benefit from the tremendous scope of research being conducted by public institutions.

[dice]

Originally Posted by frogsleap farm

Working for a small company, my limited experience with the Bayh-Dole reforms is positive,

That is fine, but that does not change what I was saying about
legal precedents.

Before 1980, the position of the government with regard to
federal R&D contracts was "We, the taxpayers, will pay your
expenses to do this development work for us, plus whatever
markup over expenses you included in your bid, and if you
discover any new technology golden geese along the way,
we, the taxpayers, own them, since we paid for the work
that produced them." (Federal R&D contractors were de facto
public employees with regard to IP for the term of the contract.)

After 1980, it became "if you discover any golden geese in
the process of doing this development research for us,
you keep them."

That might have been a good way to help small business,
university researchers, and so on, but I see no good reason
why industrial or high-tech megacorporations doing defense
contracting and similar should get the same benefit, just
because we chose with Bayh-Dole to help a business sector
where finding R&D financing can be a challenge.

And the difference came down to the taxpayers retaining
ownership of the patents and copyrights or not, to the
specific wording of Bayh-Dole, not to its intention or even
to the way it functions for the sort of enterprises to which
it was intended to apply.

edit:
The real point is that this free gift to big business from the
Reagan administration, above and beyond federal R&D
contract terms, is easy to fix. Bayh-Dole can be amended so that
the government still retains ownership of any patents or
copyrights produced under federal contract, and research
organizations and businesses that qualify as "Bayh-Dole enterprises"
can be allowed to license those technologies "as if they owned
the patents themselves".

Additional law can create a blanket prohibition of granting of
ownership of intellectual property developed with taxpayer
funds to private enterprise.

This would allow Bayh-Dole to function the way it always has for
the research organizations that it was intended to assist, while
preventing administrations in the pocket of big business from
scaling the practice up to benefit enterprises to which it was
never intended to apply.

[strax]

I havent seen seed for Jerusalem anywhere. I know that it is out there, but it doesnt seem to be very popular, although I have heard good things about it.

I love hearts so it would be great to find some.

strax

[dice]

[Jerusalem]

brokenbar sent a large seed collection to GooberStraw in
Toronto last February that included Jerusalem. (You could
try a PM to see if GooberStraw still has them.)

Shy Valley Farm apparently had plants of it last spring (link
from VGary in a post here), and an email or whatever might
be able to arrange a deal for some seeds:
http://www.shyvalley.com/Tomatoes.htm
(It looks like they normally sell plants rather than seeds.)

[frogsleap farm]

How about Tasti-Lee, the new crimson type from the University of Florida? I see this has been licensed to Bejo, but I couldn't find a commercial source of seed.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by frogsleap farm

How about Tasti-Lee, the new crimson type from the University of Florida? I see this has been licensed to Bejo, but I couldn't find a commercial source of seed.

(Commercial seed of Tasti-Lee™ is sold and marketed by Bejo Seeds, Inc. Please visit Bejo Seed's website for additional information (http://bejoseeds.com).)

And when I access that link they want my user name, how tall I am, what color my two cats are and who knows what else.

Bejo has a close relationship with Seedway here in the US and that's where I think they're going to place Mt. Magic and Plum Regal and Tast-Lee, and if you want to download the stuff from either the Bejo or Seedway websites, there are several, go to it Mark, b'c I give up.

I still haven't heard back from Elaine at Bejo and it seems to me that by now Bejo should know where they're going to place their various varieties for 2011 b'c catalogs and websites will be changed soon.

I urged Elaine to try and convince Bejo to place these varieties at seed companies where folks could buy small pack amounts, not just with large commercial firms.

That's all I could do is to suggest and to promote greater access to these seeds. I mean Randy's Smarty F1 is at Johnny's, but I didn't take the time to see if seed for that one was produced and distributed by Bejo as well.