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INTERNATIONAL, INC. Breyer, J., dissenting
distinct, uniform, and stable). And it provided the breeder with an exclusive right to sell, offer to sell, reproduce, import, or export the variety, including the seeds. § 2483.
At the same time, the PVPA created two important exceptions. The first provided that a farmer who plants his fields with a protected plant "shall not infringe any right hereunder" by saving the seeds and planting them in future years. § 2543. The second permitted "use and reproduction of a protected variety for plant breeding or other bona fide research." § 2544.
Nothing in the history, language, or purpose of the 1970 statute suggests an intent to reintroduce into the scope of the general words "manufacture, or composition of matter" the subject matter that the PPA had removed, namely, plants. To the contrary, any such reintroduction would make meaningless the two exceptions—for planting and for research—that Congress wrote into that Act. It is not surprising that no party argues that passage of the PVPA somehow enlarged the scope of the Utility Patent Statute.
III
The Court replies as follows to the claim that its reading of the Utility Patent Statute nullifies the PPA's limitation of protection to plants produced by graft and the PVPA's exemptions for seeds and research: (1) The Utility Patent Statute applies only to plants that are useful, novel, nonobvious, and for which the inventor provides an enabling written description of the invention. 35 U. S. C. §§ 101, 102, 103, 112 (1994 ed. and Supp. V). (2) The PVPA applies to plants that are novel, distinct, uniform, and stable. 7 U. S. C. § 2402. (3) The second set of criteria seem slightly easier to meet, as they do not include nonobviousness and a written description (Pioneer does not argue that the "useful" requirement is significant). (4) And Congress could reasonably have intended the planting and research exceptions to
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