Facts You Need To Know About the Plant Patent Act

The Plant Patent Act extended the legal protection of patent law to the inventors of genetically new and unique varieties of plants created through asexual means, excluding tubers. It was passed in 1930 as part of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act. The Plant Patent Act constituted Title III of that larger package of laws, and today exists in codified, statutory form in the United States Code's Title 35, which deals with general patent law issues such as registration, protection and other matters. 

The plant patent provisions may be found in Part II, Chapter 15, Section 161. According to the language in Section 161, the general strictures of patent law may be considered through this provision to apply to plant patent protections, except as otherwise noted.  As provided for by the Plant Patent Act, the necessary registration procedures can be performed through the responsible federal agency, known at the time of the bill's passage as the Patent Protection Office and since renamed, by the Patent Act of 1952

Patent and Trademark Office 

The 1930 plant patent legislation is typical of United States patent law in its basic conception of the rights due to patent holders in negative terms. That is to say, the dispensation of a plant patent does not give the owner the right to make use of the plant so much as it provides the right to block others from using it. Just as "normal," utility patents prohibit the manufacture of a technology or performance of a process, a plant patent will block the asexual reproduction of the genetic breed. This right lasts for an initial period of 20 years.

The main concern of United States patent law lies with technological processes or devices, which may receive protection from utility patents. By contrast, plant patents join another kind of patent protection, that of designpatentabilitynovelordinary skill in the artusefulness 

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