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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

This is so simplistic.

They made a new varietal. Nobody is saying he can't plant any of the standard heirloom Nectarines. The patent will expire in a while, and then anyone can do it.

Honestly, how are you proposing incentivizing developing new varietals if nobody can have patents on any breeds at all? This is how it has worked for half a century and mild gripes aside, the quality of the produce in stores is WAY WAY BETTER than it was before (seriously, what is the last time you ate a Red Delicious apple?)

Have like... some awareness of the large functioning important system you are mindlessly breaking with throwaway comments.

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> The patent will expire in a while, and then anyone can do it.

I've read this a couple of times in these comments. However, this "in a while" is meaningless. A quick search suggests plant patents are 20 years from filing of patent. That's not as bad as I was thinking after hearing about the copyright nonsense of 95 years of publication or 120 years from creation depending. That'd be multiple generations of farmers rather than just one.

Yes, I assumed that was common knowledge. 20 years is pretty reasonable.

> how are you proposing incentivizing developing new varietals if nobody can have patents on any breeds at all?

How do academics make scientific discoveries if the results are public?

Government, industry, and private patronage. People want better crops, they’ll fund and make contests for them

Well, yes. That's what is happening. The contest is called "market" and "the people" reward competitors by paying them.

Patents are used to enforce the rules so that competitors don't cheat.

Selective breeding requires sometimes _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work. This is not a good fit for academia and even worse fit for government programs.

> _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work

Sounds like it's ripe for AI automation. Need less of this nonsense about restricting access because "effort should be rewarded with exclusivity".

How do you propose to use AI to grow fruit trees faster?

Not grow faster, but to reduce the R&D effort in increasing yield quality and quantity, similar to what this guy[0] did in his garage. And to directly optimize the production itself, like automatically managing FarmBots[1] at the family and community level. Entire plant food pipeline becomes essentially free, and similar can be done re animal food as well.

[0] https://twitter.com/DouglasYaoDY/status/2070904914050797582 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48706690

[1] https://farm.bot/

profit share, royalties, etc. many ways to structure economic benefit

That... was exactly the deal he had and didn't like.

> Under the agreements, Mora was to pay Giumarra a royalty of $2.50 per tree and a 4% production royalty based off the gross sales of the fruit the trees produced, as well as a sales commission.

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