Patents, protections, and privileges - The establishment of intellectual property in animals and plants

摘要

Utility patent protection has been granted broadly to living organisms in the United States only in the last quarter century, but in the late nineteenth century, for reasons related to the nationalization of agricultural markets, animal breeders and plant innovators began attempting to devise alternative arrangements to protect intellectual property (IP) in their living products. The arrangements had to take into account both the requirements of IP protection and the various ways the organisms could be reproduced. For animals, prior to patentability, the arrangements involved mainly breed associations and registries. Plant innovators tried to achieve returns from their IP through pricing strategies and trademarks. Finding neither adequate, they began to agitate for legislation that would protect their type of IP, an effort that resulted in the passage of the Plant Patent Act of 1930, the first legislation anywhere to extend a type of patent protection to living products.