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| If your plant breeders rights are similar to our Plant Variety Protection Act, they last for 20 years but allow for two very important exceptions: farmers can save seed for their own use and breeders can use the protected variety for creating a new variety.
Seed companies started putting utility patents on seed in addition to PVPA protection in order to deny those two exceptions.
If we are going to have patents on seed and if seed companies like Monsanto are going to prosecute farmers, then the patents better be valid ones. Seems a modern day "Robin Hood" is having some effect against a few really big corporate monopolists, big Gorillas like Pfizer and Microsoft to name a few.
http://www.pubpat.org/News.htm
Again, I think it would be an excellent use of checkoff funds to fund organizations such as PUBPAT or to use the money to otherwise research patents to make sure farmers aren't having to pay tech fees on bogus or serial patents.
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How long is Monsanto's patent on RR beans?
