ipplants

Just about every field of knowledge is undergoing changes and challenges in regards to intellectual property rights right now. People are starting to trademark plant varieties (i.e. Richter’s holds propagation rights for tons of plants in their catalogue). Wasabi is ®. As people are improving varieties, they are trademarking them.


 * Is it risky to propagate and distribute? Are there stories of anyone being challenged for sharing/selling trademarked plants?
 * Infringing on an IPR exposes you to litigation- but will they actually take you down?
 * New varieties are not actually making a new product because they are selecting from and existing organism
 * We should be pushing for OPEN SOURCE! We can pay good $ for the variety but propagate wildly!
 * What can we learn from Alternative to copyright in the technology world i.e. Copyleft for software or Creative Commons for digital learning resources?
 * This is why we need a guild- to support each other through any sort of challenges.