North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Hal Love" <lovehd@comcast.net>]

A patent watch would be a good thing, but I found its a little more complicated determining the life of a patent. Any utility or plant patents filed after June 8, 1995 are good for 20 years from the filing date. Plant patents issued or pending on or before June 8, 1995 have a term measured by the longer of 17 years from the date of issue or 20 years from the date of filing.

 

A good example is the apple 'Honeycrisp', which has a filing date of November 7, 1988, and an issue date of March 20, 1990. The longer of the two options would be 20 years from the filing date, which means it will expire on November 7, 2008. If you have a particular plant in mind you want to check, its no big deal to look it up in a few minutes, but if you want to compile a comprehensive list of things about to expire, it would be very time consuming.

 

BTW, Monsanto's patent on glyphosate resistant plants expires on July 10, 2007.

 

Hal

 

One thing that would be nice is a 'patent watch'  So that we would know when an item comes

off patent, so that we would not be in violation of any laws once the material is now public.