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The evolving landscape of plant varietal rights in the United States, 1930–2008

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The types of plants being protected, by whom and by what form of varietal right, has changed markedly since the United States first enabled intellectual property protection for plant varieties in 1930.

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Figure 1: US varietal rights, 1930–2008.
Figure 2: Changing distribution of varietal rights by crop.
Figure 3: Changing composition of applicant pool, 1930–2008.
Figure 4: Increasing concentration of varietal rights applications, 1930–2008.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are especially appreciative of research assistance from C. Pratt, S. Pardey, M. Hallaway and C. Chan-Kang, and for the excellent assistance with data queries from personnel at the US Patent and Trademark Office and USDA's Plant Variety Protection Office. The research for this paper was supported by the International Science and Technology Policy (InSTePP) center at the University of Minnesota, the University of Waterloo, the US National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, by way of the HarvestChoice project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philip Pardey and Jennifer Drew are in the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.,

    Philip Pardey & Jennifer Drew

  2. Bonwoo Koo is in the Department of Management Sciences, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.,

    Bonwoo Koo

  3. Jeffrey Horwich is a host of Marketplace from American Public Media, Los Angeles, California, USA.,

    Jeffrey Horwich

  4. Carol Nottenburg is at Cougar Patent Law, Renton, Washington, USA.,

    Carol Nottenburg

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  1. Philip Pardey
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  2. Bonwoo Koo
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  3. Jennifer Drew
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Correspondence to Philip Pardey.

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Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Supplementary Methods (PDF 213 kb)

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Pardey, P., Koo, B., Drew, J. et al. The evolving landscape of plant varietal rights in the United States, 1930–2008. Nat Biotechnol 31, 25–29 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2467

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