Cite as: 534 U. S. 124 (2001)
Breyer, J., dissenting
v. Estate of Romani, 523 U. S. 517, 530-533 (1998) (holding that a later, specific statute trumps an earlier, more general statute).
Nothing that occurred after 1930 changes this conclusion. In 1952, the Utility Patent Statute was recodified, and the PPA language I have quoted was given its own separate place in the Code. See 35 U. S. C. § 161 et seq. (1994 ed. and Supp. V). As Pioneer itself concedes, that change was not "substantive." Brief for Respondent 7; see also ante, at 133. Indeed, as recodified the PPA still allows a breeder to obtain a patent when he "invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant," 35 U. S. C. § 161 (1994 ed.) (emphasis added), but it only allows the patent holder to "exclude others from asexually reproducing the plant or selling or using the plant so reproduced," § 163 (emphasis added).
Nor does the enactment of the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 change the conclusion. The PVPA proved necessary because plant breeders became capable of creating new and distinct varieties of certain crops, corn, for example, that were valuable only when reproduced through seeds—a form of reproduction that the earlier Act freely permitted. See S. Rep. No. 91-1246, pp. 2-3 (1970). Just prior to its enactment a special Presidential Commission, noting the special problems that plant protection raised and favoring the development of a totally new plant protection scheme, had recommended that "[a]ll provisions in the patent statute for plant patents be deleted . . . ." President's Commission on the Patent System, To Promote the Progress of Useful Arts, S. Doc. No. 5, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 20-21 (1967) (hereinafter S. Doc.). Instead Congress kept the PPA while adding the PVPA. The PVPA gave patent-like protection (for 20 years) to plants reproduced by seed, and it excluded the PPA's requirement that a breeder have "asexually reproduced" the plant. 7 U. S. C. §§ 2402, 2483. It imposed certain specific requirements. § 2402 (variety must be new,
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