Growing Hops From Seed?

[Owly055]

It's actually not all that difficult to prove via genetic testing, and the trademark owners have legal agreements with all workers on farms. So, in essence there's quite a bit to stop it from ever happening...

What do "legal agreements" mean to farm workers? There are legal consequences to selling meth also.......... These are not "genetically engineered" crops, they are the products of cross breeding, and ultimately the same cross breeding can result in a virtually identical cross, and in any case a home grower is never going to be subjected to genetic testing...... a commercial grower is another story. One hop plant looks pretty much like the next anyway. If I were growing Mosaic and Amarillo in my home hop patch it would be impossible to identify them legally unless there was a "trail" they could establish FIRST, they they would need a warrant, then genetic testing, then they could do little if anything to me beyond a slap on the wrist, as a non commercial home gardener.
If I could buy a small piece of rhizome or rooted cutting I was sure was Mosaic for $100 on the streets of Yakima or some Mexican cantina in the valley, I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough!!

H.W.

 

[Apimyces]

If you advertise having a protected variety, then either you are selling a protected trademark, which is illegal, or pretending to, which is fraud and also illegal. If found, your stock could be tested, and it can be proved to either be or not to be the claimed protected variety, or proved that it is... and if it is, you'd have some explaining to do about how you got your hands on stolen property.

Now, if you didn't advertise it at all, and kept it to yourself, then yea I reckon you'd be able to get away with it. But if you pay some random migrant worker for a specific illegal rhizome, how can you ever be sure he doesn't rip you off and sell you a common public variety for black market prices? Low risk high reward for him to do so.

 

[PapaBearJay]

....and there it is!