This is not accurate. It depends on the purpose of distribution of the plant material. If you distribute it for research purposes, it’s not an infringement (due to the research exemption). However, if you distribute it for commercial purposes, it does constitute an infringement:
Note the “deliver it, ship it” language. The shipping company is not liable (7 U.S. Code § 2545 - Intermediary exemption), but the sender is if the shipment is made for commercial purposes.
You may be right. What is the legal definition of plant material? Is an apple “plant material”? I would think if an infringment would involve propagating a new living plant.
I can’t copy-paste here the entire text of the law. Anybody can read it for all the details:
The spirit of the law is that you cannot sell/exchange/send/etc. any part of the plant that can be used for asexual propagation or use any such material for asexual propagation, except when exemptions (research exemption, private noncommercial uses, etc.) apply.
Regardless of the letter if the Law, I am guessing that patent law is almost entirely inforced by the patent holder and their lawyers not the government. Im sure you could become a target if you were knowingly assisting in wholsale patented plant propagation.
Thanks! Great. Glad to know there is this exemption. That opens up a ton of fair use for the home orchardist and gardener. So it is legal to graft another tree from a patented variety as backup. It could also be construed to allow home propagation of patented rootstocks.
Be cautious, the interpretation by state governments is how I described it, regardless of the intent or what you may be able to set as a precedent in court. State regulation of a LOT of things, including drugs, involve the interpretation of commercial far more loosely than you may intuitively expect, and has been deliberately broadened to cover things like digital media and home production of drugs. It definitely seems like a reasonable interpretation that something you produce yourself, on your own land, and consume entirely on your property can’t possibly be commerce, but states have specifically rejected that in an effort to regulate marijuana, primarily. Your state could easily decide that you’re creating commerce by growing an apple which you then consume, and thus regulate it under the interstate commerce provisions of the constitution. I am not a lawyer, but I could find plenty of cases where states (again, in pursuit of drug regulation) found that producing a consumable product is automatically commercial even if you don’t sell it, so a state court could easily find that way, but I can’t find any evidence a court has even considered this particular clause.
I’d love to hear a lawyer’s opinion on this. My understanding for plant patents was always that any replication (except for research purposes) was a violation of the patent protection. Even saving back patent protected seeds for home use was a violation according to some of the stuff I’ve read in the past.
There have been several changes and rulings about this stuff through the years, which results in a lot of confusion, but the last stuff I’ve read indicated any asexual propagation by patented protected material was a patent infringement, unless for research purposes.
Clarification by a lawyer thoroughly familiarized with this subject would be welcome (although understood I’m not paying the $200/hr. billable research fee 
)
Are seeds and pollen protected by the patent?
Yes, as far as I’m aware, all US patent law is civil law and is thus litigated by the one being infringed upon.
@itheweatherman, depends what they have. My understanding is a regular plant patent would not protect sexual reproduction but a PVP for plants that that are true to seed would protect seeds.
So Nadia cherry plum seeds are not covered by the patent?
It looks like 7 U.S.C. 2541 deals with Plant Variety Protection and not Plant Patents. So it is not applicable to fruit trees produced through asexual propagation.
The relevant text is 35 U.S.C. 163
Grant
In the case of a plant patent, the grant shall
include the right to exclude others from asexually
reproducing the plant, and from using, offering
for sale, or selling the plant so reproduced,
or any of its parts, throughout the United
States, or from importing the plant so reproduced,
or any parts thereof, into the United
States.
So @olpea is correct. The Plant Patent Law would enjoin anyone from "asexually reproducing the plant, and from using it.
Yes, seedlings from Nadia would not be protected by the Nadia patent but could be separately patented.
That’s my understanding as well.
A sport of Nadia that was yellow would also be patentable. (See Blondee apple, a sport of Gala, or any number of Red or Golden Delicious apples.)
Awesome! If that’s the case, I want to do cherry backcrosses with Nadia.
While I am not a lawyer, from my understanding seed saving is not protected by patent law; in the cases of Montesanto and soybeans it’s that the farmers in question had signed an agreement in conjunction with their seed purchases, and that agreement was what has been upheld in court.