I thought I understood plant patents, but I’m getting confused. Several sites are listing Seascape Strawberries as being under a patent (PP7614) others do not. Strawberry plants. org even listed the “fact” that Seascape is under a patent as a down side of the berry in a article written in Oct. of this year. When I looked the patent up, it says that it was granted Aug 1991. I thought that patents were good for 20 years, in which case this strawberry would no longer be under patent. Am I missing something?
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Hi FG, welcome to the forum.
I checked Google patent search and it appears Seascape is off patent now. I’ve noticed that some sites will state that certain cultivars are still on patent, but a simple patent search shows that they aren’t. I believe you are right about plant patents, that they last 20 years from when the patent is granted.
https://patents.google.com/patent/USPP7614P/en?q=Strawberry&q=seascape&oq=Strawberry+seascape
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Thanks for the welcome and the link. 
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YW. I did a search of other ‘newer’ Day Neutral strawbs (of which Seascape is), like Albion, Portola, Monterey and San Andreas, and those apparently are still on patent.
I actually just got a new 2020 Indiana Berry catalog this week, and they sell Seascape, and it says it’s under patent.
Are you considering getting some Seascape? I just have a small run of Jewel and Earliglow (planted '17), and a run of Flavorfest, planted this year. Earliglow taste better than Jewel, but are much smaller, and they don’t last as long. My patch has degraded into a weed infested mess, I’ve neglected it this year, and will have to get in there and clean it up again.
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I planted 500 Seascape last year. I normally get my strawberries (and raspberries) from Norse Farms, which has it listed with no patent number. I was going to order some other varieties from E&R seed this year and as I was looking through their catalog, I noticed a patent number listed for Seascape, but I’m not so sure that they were really indicating that they thought it was under patent because the other patented varieties had the patent number listed a little differently. The reason that I needed to look it up to be sure is because the patented varieties have a different price point than those not under patent. I think I’m going to try to call them tomorrow. The company is Amish owned and it could be that they didn’t realize that the patent for these has expired.
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Ok. Sometimes the still on patent plants cost more but not always. In my IB catalog, Seascape costs the same as the patented varieties.
Nourse is a good vendor, my first two varieties were from them. The first time I planted them, we had a flash flood, and most of my plants got washed out. So, I cleaned them up and repacked them and stored them until it dried out enough. But, by that time, most of the plants were waking up, and most did not survive the replant. I told Nourse about this and they sent me 50 new plants free of charge and they did great. We got our first crop from them last year.
Wow, 500, that’s a lot of plants, how did they do, good flavor, size, production?
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Yes, I really like Nourse, their products always arrive looking top notch and grow well. That’s really awesome customer service that you got from them. I’m not surprised. I have called them several times to ask questions about products and they are always very friendly and ready to answer all of my questions.
We grow for farmers markets and I also make jams/jellies/fruit butters as added value products. We will be noting production next year. We already have a small run of Seascape on the property that was planted 5 years or so ago. Production is not all that high, but that’s the way of day neutrals. Flavor is EXCELLENT in our opinion, which is why we decided to plant more on a larger scale. Altogether last year we planted around 1200 plants, mostly day neutrals. I think I’m only going to order around 500 plants this year. I wanted to check out a bunch of new June Bearers to see which ones I like best.
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Plant patents expire 20 years after the application date. For USPP 7614, the application date is 1990-02-13, so the patent expired on 2010-02-13, almost ten years ago. People have a tendency to copy-paste without giving too much thought to dates.
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