Seventy-nine years ago, President Herbert Hoover signed into law a legal mechanism that allowed anyone to lay claim on a new type of "invention": the US Plant Patent Act of 1930.
What was the purpose of the law? Those of you that recall a post I wrote last year already have a good idea on the answer (See The "Honey Heart" Cherry Tree of 1851, and Plant Patents, March 31, 2008). The law was (is) intended to protect proprietary rights of the developer of a new plant. A plant patent allows only one person to grow that new patented plant: the person who holds the patent.
Why did the federal government think this was important? Well, just as conventional patents on new inventions (coupled with our capitalistic economy) encourage the development of new helpful gizmos, plant patents encourage the development of new beneficial and enriching plants. These plants could be improved food crops with a new disease resistance, or a trait that eased the work for a grower. For example, on March 9, 1943, inventor M. B. Crane received a plant patent on his new thornless long-bearing blackberry plant (Plant Patent #571), which made harvesting the fruit a lot easier. Plant patents were determined to be good for society, good for the economy, and good for the nursery industry.
I recently stumbled on a 1948 issue of National Geographic with an article that gives an interesting glimpse on how the "new" plant patent law was being received, only 18 years after it was adopted. "The only way a grower could make a profit on a new (plant) before 1930 was to build up, as secretly as possible, all the stock his capital permitted, then throw it all on the market at the top prices people would pay" the article explains. "In a year or so, competitors would be building up their own stocks, grown from the no-longer-secret variety, now widely distributed." To make matters worse, in the days of the Heirloom Orchardist many growers would simply rename the new plant, call it their own, and introduce it again as another "new" introduction. That's one lousy way to run an industry.
Perhaps it's needless to say, the 1948 article praises the new law. It ushered in the start of a real honest, and economically viable plant breeding industry. So let me ask you a couple interesting questions: First, by 1948 how many plant patents do you think had been issued? The answer is 750. That's a remarkably low number compared to what is received by the patent office today on just an annual basis.
The second question is: What type of plant had been issued the most patents by 1948? Was it corn? Apples? An important disease resistant potato? Nope....It was the rose. By 1948, "about half" of the 750 plant patents issued had been on roses. Hmm...it seems the heart may be more important than the stomach.
