Plant Breeders Rights

Hey everyone, why don’t we take a step back. First, it is God that creates the flower not man. The breeder is nothing more than, at best, a well informed/trained Bee.

If it is so important to protect your work and you view it like it’s all yours, maybe you shouldn’t be breeding at all. The fact remains, all the roses you created in your blood line came from someone else’s work. Thus making it impossible for all the people who have contributed to reap the supposed cash rewards being spoke of. Plus, the vast majority of the people (hybridizers of yesteryear)like Buck -would view this as a joke. There are far more grevious examples of people getting taken advantage of in rose breeding. Example Carefree Beauty - trademarked by Buck, but Ruby and his daughter recieve nothing from Carefree Delight or Wonder or Sunshine. See my point! Now when the big boys get the power, the little people get the shaft! Personally the very fact roses have become lost in power trips, makes me sick.

Old rose books like to use the word inventing- how many of us today really see it that way. If you really want to make it big with a rose, you need to tissue culture it after proper patent protection. Then introduce it directly to the market as a single source provider, that way any one who sells your rose without your permission/licensure is in infringement of the plants patent. Simply put, you control each and every person/nursery that want’s to sell that rose.

As far as thinking you own the pollen/germplasm that your rose produces, you need to step back and visit your God. Because when you loose humilty you have lost your faith. I feel sorry for people that are so grandiose, that they forget the most basic point of roses and or rose hybridizing - SHARING THE BEAUTY!

Bob Boylan


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Bob, I like your sensibility. I for one would be happy just to get a rose out there to be appreciated by others. If anyone would be able to get something useful from its pollen or seeds I would be honored.

I’ll never get rich I’m sure, but neither will I lose sleep worrying about who might be breeding new roses from mine.

Randy

Bob,

“First, it is God that makes the flower. The breeder is nothing more than, at best, a well informed/trained Bee.” And your point is??? God (if such an entity exists) may make the flower, but it is the plant breeder who manipulates the flower into an improved plant that improves human beings quality of life either nutritionally, medically, aesthetically or economically. Therefore, a plant breeder’s work should not be disdainfully trivialized by comparing his/her work to a “well informed/trained Bee.” In the case of a rose breeder, it usually takes several years of literature and empirical research before he/she is able to develop a valuable breeding line (s) that advance improvements in the quality of roses. Whether it is done on the amateur or professional level, the work of a rose breeder is recognized as one of the most important contributions to horticulture and he/she should always be honored for it.

“The fact remains, all the roses you created in your blood line came from someone else’s work. Thus making it impossible for all the people who have contributed to reap the supposed cash rewards spoke of.” Absolutely not true in two respects. First, a rose breeder can easily develop breeding lines by hybridizing species and develop cultivars from them. Secondly, generally there are no legal restrictions at the present time using previously developed cultivars in a breeding program. It’s interesting that when the David Austin roses are licensed for propagation, there is a restriction of using the cultivars for breeding purposes. But he has had no problem using roses developed by other people to develop his cultivars that he now puts breeding restrictions on. By the way, his development of the English roses has made him a wealthy man.

Regarding Dr. Griffith Buck, his mandate at Iowa State College was to teach and hybridize roses. As a college professor he would have been paid well and have received a good pension. Therefore, I don’t think he would have agreed with you that he was taken financially advantage of when he developed an excellent rose breeding program and introduced many rose cultivars.

A couple more of your statements are so judgmental that I am not even going to respond to them. But as far as your statement about “the most basic point of rose breeding or rose hybridizing - Sharing the Beauty,” I’ll agree that this activity is part of it but not basic. First, it is the satisfaction of being creative in developing new roses. Secondly, is the enjoyment of the process involved - breeding, germinating the seeds, growing the seedlings and doing the selection work. Regardless, I don’t see any conflict in “sharing the beauty” and making a profit at the same time. Welcome to the world of horticulture business.

Paul

Yes, I share Paul’s view. Despite anyone’s belief system, it is really all about the breeder. I’m not in some university just to do what bees do, although both bee and hybridizer function in the same job but on a very different level and sophistication.

I think David Austin is out of his mind! To prevent unlawful propogation of roses for econimical reasons is one thing, but to patent genes… mon dieu! How could he do such a thing when obviously when his roses borrow genes from other roses that another hybridizer created.

I’m just wondering right now how many roses out there are with false parentage information. Remembering what Henry Kuska said a long time ago, he suggested that it may be more then just a handful. Sigh…

Enrique

In another forum one of the members of the RHA gave a link to an “interesting” article concerning a rose hybridizing “skeleton in the closet”. After about a day, the direct link no longer worked (for me), but I could still find the link through Google. Here is the Google link:

http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:Uma3Jvm-CREJ:www.buckeyerose.com/THEGREATOUTLAW.pdf+"%2Bwww.buckeyerose.%2Bcom/THEGREATOUTLAW.pdf."&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Link: 216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:Uma3Jvm-CREJ:www.buckeyerose.com/THEGREATOUTLAW.pdf+%22%2Bwww.buckeyerose.%2Bcom/THEGREATOUTLAW.pdf.%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

I would think it is fairly clear that hybridizing is more than distributing pollen on assorted roses. Paul has made a very well thought out statement about breeders rights and has presented it with some good supporting arguments. I have to agree that there needs to be some thought about ways to protect someone

Why complicate the process with nebulous qualifying labels like “hard earned” or “years of work” that make some roses seem more valuable than others merely by virtue of the time and energy put into them, or by raising difficult legal questions? Let’s just set a cut-off date, say, 1 Jan. 2010, and after that any new patented/PVR-ed rose is by default off limits to breeding for a period of x years unless they designate otherwise? It’s the only way I see this working that could even slightly minimize the headaches (and there will still be plenty of those, whenever a legal challenge arises). I think breeders will find it fun to have to check every big new rose coming onto the market to see if it looks like it could contain genes from one of your creations and might be worth investigating with expensive tests and then pursuing the expensive lawsuits to follow up, but it would be a fate of their own choosing. I don’t think anyone will be able to coax the government to test roses for them and alert them to potential violators or even carry out the prosecution themselves, but if at some happy future date genetic testing is as easy as pricking a leaf and getting an instant computer DNA readout, then we’ll see. It’s all nice and easy in theory; it’s not that simple when you think about the complexities of wording a law and proving your case. Even if you want the law to work mostly by having a deterrent effect, you’re probably going to have to fry a few people in court first or nobody is going to respect your rights.

I think there are some good points in the argument for protection of breeders’ work and in many ways I very much agree with them - really, I do - at least in principle. I just don’t see a practical solution being laid out here for what could be a legitimate problem, and I think one is absolutely required for the whole thing not to become moot. Unless you happen to have a lot of lobbying money in your pockets; then I think you could do just about anything your heart desires, and greed is the limit…

I did think of something, just that fast - maybe it’s time for a guild of sorts. For-profit breeders could organize some kind of alliance that’s analagous to the RIAA in the music industry, where by paying their dues, individual parties could reap the benefits of a collective lobbying and legal defense force that could instantly squash all that oppose them. Or does it already exist to some degree? Any thoughts on that?

It’s getting awfully think in here! Personally, it is too political for my blood. Realistically, I question where the line is drawn between this being about horticulture or business especially concerning the fact that places are still able to produce virus’d plants. Point being, fish need to be friend before jumping a new gun.

This thread was so interesting I thought other new-bes would enjoy.

I understand both sides. Honestly, I can not tell you were I would stand. Thanks for bumping this thread Neil, I had never read it and it is an interesting read.

No problem Andrew. The plant bus. has to be a tough route what with the chance of dying or rotting and seasonal. The hard goods bus. in this day is bad enough and the best way is to stay so far ahead it doesn’t matter who in the world tries to copy.