'Did Plant Patents Create the American Rose?' (NBER Working Paper No. 16983, 2011) [
PDF] by Petra Moser & Paul Rhode comments that -
The Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first step towards creating property rights for biological innovation: it introduced patent rights for asexually-propagated plants. This paper uses data on plant patents and registrations of new varieties to examine whether the Act encouraged innovation. Nearly half of all plant patents between 1931 and 1970 were for roses. Large commercial nurseries, which began to build mass hybridization programs in the 1940s, accounted for most of these patents, suggesting that the new intellectual property rights may have helped to encourage the development of a commercial rose breeding industry. Data on registrations of newly-created roses, however, yield no evidence of an increase in innovation: less than 20% of new roses were patented, European breeders continued to create most new roses, and there was no increase in the number of new varieties per year after 1931.
The authors conclude -
Did the Plant Patent Act of 1930 help create the modern American rose breeding industry? Using plant patents as the sole indicator of innovation suggests that the answer is yes: large-scale breeding efforts of American firms, such as Jackson & Perkins, Armstrong, Weeks, and Conard-Pyle contribute a staggering share of U.S. plant patents grants between 1930 and 1970, and large commercial breeders dominate the list of the top ten patentees.
A closer look, however, suggests that patents played at best a secondary role, and that U.S. breeders mostly used patents strategically to protect themselves from litigation. Data on registrations of new varieties reveal that only a small share of new varieties, less than 20%, was patented. Moreover, European breeders continued to contribute the large majority of new varieties, and only one U.S. breeder, J&P’s Gene Boerner, is among the top ten breeders in terms of new varieties. In fact, the share of new varieties created by U.S. breeders dropped after the creation of plant patents, from nearly 40% from 1900 to 1930 to slightly over 20% from 1900 to 1970.
Notably, some of the most successful American roses, including Walter Van Fleet’s hardy American climbers, were creations of the pre-patent period. Other prominent American roses such as Conard-Pyle’s Peace rose, or J&P’s Pinnocchio were originally bred by European firms. American breeders began to propagate these roses when World War I suspended European imports and improved them to create the American rose.
