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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
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