Hi Jim McK. and all, Copyrights, Trade Marks, and Patents are three quite distinct forms of intellectual property. Written materials are implicitly copyrighted as soon as recorded. Alphabets are explicitly exempt from copyright. One or two words are not likely to be recognized as copyrighted out of context, but I've not looked into that in detail. Trade marks must be formally registered with the US Patent Office to have any legal status. Trade marks allowed to be used without the accompanying (R) mark may lapse into the public domain, e.g., I think that existing trade mark registrations on "coke" and "xerox" have been challenged in the past. Patents on plants are still -- in my mind! -- a bit vague. However, they definitely have to be formally applied for and can be rejected by the Patent Office. A plant is not protected in any way unless the formal, legal patenting process is followed. Once a plant has been released into commerce, it cannot be patented retroactively. Plant patents can protect a clone or protect a seed line. The restrictions on use will vary, depending what is protected in the patent. A patented variety (strain or clone) must have a patent name, and it must be unique and not have been previously used, e.g., as a trade mark or as a cultivar name. So a given plant could have three names: its designation in the patent, a trade mark, and a registered cultivar name. The first two NAMES are legally protected; the registered cultivar name is not legally protected, but is only protected under the gentlemen's agreement of the ICNCP. One can use DNA to tell which herd of elephants poached ivory came from. One can identify paternity of humans from DNA. One could probably identify particular clones of tulips or daffodils from DNA, if anyone wanted to spend the money on it. The DNA technology is there to differentiate between individuals from the same species, population, etc., but the will and financial resources to exploit it may not be. Clear as mud? Jim Shields At 10:10 AM 1/24/2006 -0500, you wrote: >In response to Jim Shields comments: >...... >When I wrote that post, I was thinking of the rights to cultivars as if they >were copyright rights. My understanding of copyright for print materials is >that - please excuse the clumsy phrasing - the process of creating a work >eligible for copyright and the existence of the copyright are coeval. >...... ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA