144
Opinion of the Court
tion to the contrary, to regard each as effective." Morton, supra, at 551. Here we can plainly regard each statute as effective because of its different requirements and protections. The plain meaning of § 101, as interpreted by this Court in Chakrabarty, clearly includes plants within its subject matter. The PPA and the PVPA are not to the contrary and can be read alongside § 101 in protecting plants.
3
Petitioners also suggest that even when statutes overlap and purport to protect the same commercially valuable attribute of a thing, such "dual protection" cannot exist. Brief for Petitioners 44-45. Yet this Court has not hesitated to give effect to two statutes that overlap, so long as each reaches some distinct cases. See Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U. S. 249, 253 (1992) (statutes that overlap "do not pose an either-or proposition" where each confers jurisdiction over cases that the other does not reach). Here, while utility patents and PVP certificates do contain some similar protections, as discussed above, the overlap is only partial.
Moreover, this Court has allowed dual protection in other intellectual property cases. "Certainly the patent policy of encouraging invention is not disturbed by the existence of another form of incentive to invention. In this respect the two systems [trade secret protection and patents] are not and never would be in conflict." Kewanee Oil, supra, at 484; see also Mazer v. Stein, 347 U. S. 201, 217 (1954) (the patentability of an object does not preclude the copyright of that object as a work of art). In this case, many plant varieties that are unable to satisfy the stringent requirements of § 101 might still qualify for the lesser protections afforded by the PVPA.
III
We also note that the PTO has assigned utility patents for plants for at least 16 years and there has been no indica-
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