Yeast Royalities

[Paulgs3]

When yeast is used for brewing and eventually sold, are royalties required to be paid? And if so, who would you pay them to?

 

[Homercidal]

No. Why would you think anyone would pay royalties to a company for selling a natural product? I am pretty sure you can't patent yeast...

 

[cheezydemon3]

Ahh! I get it This is a yeast unroyality.....in other words: Unreality royalty question.

well played!

Yeast Royalities.....hmmm...

 

[dyqik]

Theoretically you could breed (or possibly GM) a particular strain of yeast, and patent that for a particular use, but you'd need to pass certain thresholds of novelty in the application, not just the resulting taste. I don't think you could do that with just yeast for simple brewing, because wild brewers have almost certainly already used your strain in some form.

OTOH, commercial brewers might choose to make their yeast available to someone for yeast banking under a trade secret type NDA. Selling that yeast to other brewers would be a violation of the NDA. But if you didn't sign one, then you probably aren't covered by it (IANAL - see your lawyer if you are thinking of a specific case).

 

[Paulgs3]

Theoretically you could breed (or possibly GM) a particular strain of yeast, and patent that for a particular use, but you'd need to pass certain thresholds of novelty in the application, not just the resulting taste. I don't think you could do that with just yeast for simple brewing, because wild brewers have almost certainly already used your strain in some form.

OTOH, commercial brewers might choose to make their yeast available to someone for yeast banking under a trade secret type NDA. Selling that yeast to other brewers would be a violation of the NDA. But if you didn't sign one, then you probably aren't covered by it (IANAL - see your lawyer if you are thinking of a specific case).

That was along the lines I was thinking, like Pac Man or Greenbelt. I know certain stores have special yeasts from Wyeast and there was R&D associated with it.

Hey! It was just a crazy thought that went through my head. Thanks for the answers.

 

[Homercidal]

No worries. Just messing with ya. As far as I know there isn't any way for White Labs to control their yeast once it's been released. They can selectively collect samples of yeast and steer a certain strain toward some desired goal, or maybe they can collect strange strains from around the world, but they don't own strains. They aren't protected from people stealing (buying) their yeast and selling it themselves, other than nobody has spent the money to build a factory. Wyeast sells very much the same strains, only they have a cool packaging.

From a homebrewer standpoint you can do what you want. Now if someone were to take a whole bunch of yeast from one of the major suppliers and resell it with their name on it, that might raise some eyebrows.

 

[lshaner]

There are scenarios where a brewing yeast can be patented and the patent would not be limited to a particular use. As long as it's novel, non-obvious, described, enabled, and not a product of nature, it can be patented. This rules out most brewing yeast which was at some point in the past captured from nature. I posted about my new company in this forum recently (Omega Yeast Labs). We created genetic hybrids of the DuPont saison (i.e., Wyeast 3724) and French saison (Wyeast 3711) strains and we absolutely plan to patent whatever strains we ultimately market to the public.