[APWG] Licensed technologies=future for weed management

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Wayne & All,

Thanks for your email about licensed, trade secret technologies for weed
management and restoration--and I also include patented technologies in
that category, even though I do not do that myself.

It is a very good economic idea to protect your inventions, especially if
your invented technologies work better than any of the currently available
“open source” or public domain technologies.

My technologies are licensed trade secrets, just like Coke’s recipe is a
trade secret, or how computer programs are licensed technologies--and this
is one way to keep and sell your intellectual property, and keep your
inventions from becoming public domain.

In the 40 years I have been doing this work, I  have not ever seen any of
the public domain technologies in California or anywhere else in North
America, convert any large grassland habitat area (>50 acres) starting
with 99% weed cover, and get it back to 100% cover of over 100 local
natives, in less than a decade of work.

I think that is the strongest argument in favor of licensed weed
management technologies, vs the old, public domain technologies that
really do not work very well.

My four really big concerns about the native plant understory and the
future of weed management in North America, are:

1.) Nationwide, there may be areas of dormant native seeds underneath all
of these weed infested areas, and we will not get around to controlling
the exotics in time, before the dormant native seeds in the soil lose
their viability.

At Shaw's, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/shawlist.html we estimated that the
soil seedbank of the natives to be 100 years old or more,  and expect
elsewhere in California, similar native soil seedbanks maybe have another
decade or so, before they all die.  That would be a tremendous loss and
waste.

2.) We have not gone out yet, nationwide, to measure and check to see that
the native grass understory is reproducing. And if not, like in parts of
California and the Great Basin--Why not?--and what can we do about fixing
that huge problem?

3.) Professionals doing weed management and ecological restoration, still
do not ask for any substantial economic incentive to invent the methods
that are quick and efficient to convert weed areas back to local native
understories.  I gave a talk about that issue, you can read at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/talk.html

4.) Professionals do not realize that quick and efficient methods that are
different than any methods currently used, have a value in themselves, and
should be licensed for their client’s use if they really get the job done
quicker than the unlicensed methods.

Successful weed management and restoration technology, from the paying
client’s perspective, always has a very significant value independent from
the project itself. That is clearly evidenced when the government is
willing to invest as much as $225,000 per acre to try and invent those
technologies, that you can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html

My article about the need for licensed technologies for weed management
and ecological restoration is in the journal Ecological Restoration, "Does
the lack of patents indicate that ecological restorationists fail to see
themselves as inventors or innovators?" at
http://er.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/19/2/70.pdf

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333