does being healthy really minimise the effects of the menopause?

OP probably as bemused as me!
Menopause to apples in three posts?

They could not patent all seed, only something that they had created or hybridised themselves, and the patent would only last for a set number of years. Other growers can produce it under licence. If they have spent a lot of money experimenting and then on producing and marketing a new product, it is only reasonable that they recoup that money.

Once the patent runs out, everyone is free to produce the seed or whatever.

Who would take the trouble to investigate new and useful crosses if others could then make the profit from mass producing them at once?

Granjura I found apple (fruit) patents by searching for extra trigger words than just apple and patent - I had met the same computer patents.

Sorry, that was for durhamjen - too many similar letters in your username.

What I am saying is why do it in the first place unless you want to make more money out of it than a normal apple grower.
Why patent any crop food?
That's why I do not buy Pink Lady apples.

Loopy, it's actually six pages, not three posts.

Why shouldn't someone make money out of cloning (or grafting or whatever) a new variety of apple? You speak as if making a living from something imginative or experimental is wrong, jend.

People are making money out of food already - some of it obscene amounts from selling us rubbish.

They are not patenting or restricting anything that exists already. No-one will starve because they don't have access to food. Retailers can sell anything they like. Buyers can buy anything they like.

What they patent is their right to receive a payment if anyone uses what they have created for the first few years of its production. That happens with any other product which has been designed by someone and made by someone else.

Should they invest time and money finding better crosses out of their own pocket? There would not be many new varieties appearing if that were the case.There are not many philanthropic hobby plant breeders about any more, they went extinct when gentlemen clergymen with time to spare became a rare species.

So nobody in the food industry should ever try to develop a new or improved product with a view to making money out of it?
There is very little that we eat that is in a natural state durhamjen. Pretty much everything has been improved by animal or plant breeding or developed by food technologists.

'Pretty much everything has been improved by animal or plant breeding' ...except Homo Sapiens.

At one time 'humans' were subject to the law of natural selection. But with the advent of good health care, medicine, unlimited supply of food and so on (at least in the developed world) I wonder just how much the gene pool is weakened?

Good job we don't eat people really.
I don't think the good health care has gone on for enough generations to destroy the gene pool. And it is still the case that for much of humanity, natural selection is pretty brutal, weeding out those with congenital health problems, weak immune systems etc.