User:Ode011/New sandbox

= Plant Patent Act of 1930 = The passing of the Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first property law on a living organism. This act paved the way for sexually reproduced plants, micro-organisms, and genes to be eligible for patents.

Provisions & Limitations
The Plant Patent Act of 1930 only provides protection on asexually reproduced plants, excluding micro-organisms. The patent does not apply to sexually reproduced or tubular plants. The patent only applies to the plant itself and excludes any flowers or fruits that emerge from the grafted plant variety. The plant must have been created by the inventor and not have been a cross bred by nature. The asexually plants must create fixed replicas using an approved method through the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In addition, the plant variety created should be isolatable and not have significant similarities to another variety of plant that has been patented. The process of obtaining a plant patent is provided on United States Patent and Trademark Office

Background
The emergence of nurseries in the 19th century created a market of various grafted crops to be mass produce and sold. The increased competition of nurseries instigated various crops to be stolen and mass produced for profit. The Stark Brothers Nursery and Orchard were one of the major nurseries that were affected due to the lack of protection on their products. As a result, various organizations and communities were established to provide better protections against original plant varieties from being stolen. One of these organizations was the American Association of Nurserymen (AAN) and was lead by Paul Stark. Stark wanting to have protection on their original varieties of fruits played a prominent step to the passing of legal protection on original plant varieties. In 1906, Stark pushed Congressman Champ Clark to pass a bill to register new plant varieties to trademark. However, this bill along with many others were rejected. During the Great Depression, the economy suffered and caused harm on farmer's sales. The American Association of Nurserymen (AAN), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA), and the Society of American florists organized a committee to create another bill, for flowers and fruits, and pushed it to Washington. There were various criticism on the bill. Some representations were concerned with the credibility of some individuals that were trying to pass the bill, meanwhile, others were against the idea of patenting food and were concerned with the use of the bill. As a result, the bill was passed as the Plant Patent Act of 1930 (PPA), however the bill was different than what Stark had pushed for. The bill was rewritten to provide what exactly was patentable and to protect the work of breeders. To appease the concerns of the legislators, food and flowers were omitted from being patentable under this act.

Significance
The Plant Patent of 1930’s purpose was to provide value and economic incentives to create new plant varieties. The passing of the Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first property law on a living organism, and paved the way for sexually reproduced plants, micro-organisms, and genes to be eligible for patents. Micro-organisms fall under the category of asexual reproduced plants; however, they were excluded from the Plant Patent Act of 1930. The definition of what is considered alive under the Plant Patent Act of 1930 was brought into question in the case of Bergy II. Micro-organisms are considered asexual plants; however, it is not patentable under the plant act. It was determined that micro-organisms did not fit the exact definition of 'aliveness' that is associated with the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Thus, the Plant Patent Act of 1930 involves a list of specific characteristics that must be fulfilled to be considered patentable. One characteristic that must be fulfilled is that the new plant variety copies must be genetically stable, thus sexually preproduced plants were excluded from the act. In 1970, genetic stability was no longer considered a problem, and the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 was established to provide protection to sexually reproduced plants. In the case of Bergy II, it was also stated that the Plant Patent Act of 1930 was created on the purpose to ease economic strains that plant breeders were facing during the time, and further encourage breeders to experiment and create new plant varieties.