Plant Variety Protection

Breeders of sexually reproduced or tubular propagated plant varieties are entitled, under 7 U.S.C. § 2321 - § 2582, to exclusive rights to sell, offer, exchange, ship, import or export, propagate, use, condition, or stock a registered plant variety, or use marked seeds of a registered plant variety, without the consent of the plant variety registrant.

Disclosure Document Program

A service provided by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is the acceptance and preservation for two years of "Disclosure Documents" as evidence of the date of conception of an invention.

A paper disclosing an invention (called a Disclosure Document) and signed by the inventor or inventors may be forwarded to the PTO by the inventor (or by any one of the inventors when there are joint inventors), by the owner of the invention, or by the attorney or agent of the inventor(s) or owner. The Disclosure Document will be retained for two years, and then be destroyed unless it is referred to in a separate letter in a related patent application filed within those two years.

The Disclosure Document is not a patent application, and the date of its receipt in the PTO will not become the effective filing date of any patent application subsequently filed. Like patent applications, these documents will be kept in confidence by the PTO.

This program does not diminish the value of the conventional, witnessed, permanently bound, and page-numbered laboratory notebook or notarized records as evidence of conception of an invention, but it should provide a more credible form of evidence than that provided by the popular practice of mailing a disclosure to oneself or another person by registered mail.