Plant patenteds??????

Can anyone tell me how to tell if a plant is patented? I would like to do propagation but someone told me,"NO".I do house plants and have sold a few at work.... I have no idea how to find out if this is legal or not. Can anyone help me?

If you bought the plant recently and still have the tags, if a plant has a patent or a patent pending they are required to sell it with a tag that will tell you that, and it'll say that asexual propagation is prohibited on the tag. If you've lost the tag and can't remember if it said anything about it being patented, you can try searching on the internet if you know the cultivar name (or ask about it here--someone here may know). There are plenty of plants out there that aren't patented so I'm sure you can propagate a lot of what you have. If these are houseplants that you picked up at places like Lowes or Home Depot labelled with those wonderfully descriptive tags like "Houseplant" or "Tropical Foliage" or something like that where they don't even tell you the name of the plant, then they're definitely not patented.

I dont know if the law is any different in USA, prob is, but I know here in UK, the only time I have ever noted that plants cant be used for reproduction or sold as for business purposes is if they are F1Hybrids, that is because they dont produce seeds, therefore have to be propogated by cuttings, and this takes the owner/grower a long time and specialise programs to grow the hybrids, they dont want someone taking credit for the new strain of plants, however, the average gardener can propogate for their own use so long as they are not sold to any third party. so unless it is a Hybrid plant, that is specialy cross bread with another, by a plant breader, to get the plant that you have, I would say, you will be safe to do as you are will the folks at work, but just dont open a business doing it. hope this helps you in some way. WeeNel.

Our law is a bit different than yours. Here it doesn't have anything to do with whether it's an F1 hybrid or not, it could be any sort of hybrid or could be a sport that's able to be reproduced by cuttings. What the patent means is that you're not allowed to asexually propagate the plant for any reason, even just to make another plant for yourself. Granted, the company probably isn't going to find out and come after you unless you're selling the plant, but it's still against the rules.

Thank ecrane, I am sure it will be very similar hear, but as happened, at the time of reading the label, I shorthanded it, as it was'nt really a subject that I was interested in as I just go ahead and take cuttings for my own use and not for sale, wish I had a penny for every plant I've given away free though, but that aint the enjoyment, it's the growing and giving that I like best, but it's a good point you make, the wrong information, or ignorence is no answer to the law, thank you, you always come up trumps, Happy gardening, keep the answers comming, I love reading your work. WeeNel, Scotland UK.