Plant Patents (Chrysanthemums)

While researching the area of trademark and patent protection, Rozbeh Asmani made some interesting discoveries: In 1980 a pioneering judgement was announced in the United States, which heralded a revolution in biotechnological patenting. The US Supreme Court decided that “anything under the sun that is made by man” is patentable.

As a result of this judgement, intellectual property rights have gradually expanded in the United States. Since 1985 even plant varieties have been patentable under US law. The only conditions are that they must be new inventions, that they are capable of asexual reproduction and that they have been cultivated in a laboratory. Since then tens of thousands of ornamental plants have been patented, including over 3,000 varieties of chrysanthemums. (…) The business of industrially cultivated ornamental plants is booming, and multinational groups are earning enormous amounts of money from patented plants. In 2015 German consumers spent EUR 8 billion on flowers and ornamental plants.

— Barbara Räderscheidt: Kunst durch die Blume (Art – Saying It with Flowers, 2017), Ausstellungshaus Spoerri

Companies have been able to copyright colours with the German Patent Office since 1995, as part of their trademarks. Use of those colours by anyone else is a punishable offence. This interaction between aesthetics and capitalism has been highlighted by Rozbeh Asmani in his long-term project Colourmarks. The uncomfortable connection between colours and commercial interests is expressed in exhibition titles such as Besetzte Farben (Occupied Colours, gkg Bonn, 2016) and Wem gehört die Farbe? (Who Owns the Colours?, Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, 2018). In addition to his publication 72 Colourmarks, part of this project, major attention was attracted by his poster campaigns on 60 advertising pillars in Cologne (2017) and on 150 advertising pillars in Düsseldorf (2019).

— Felix Kucher

Moving within the field of tension between aesthetics and power, Rozbeh Asmani looks not only at patented colours, but also at the connection between shape, colour and commercialisation. In Mon Chéri, the patented elements are not only the combined word/image trademark, but also the shape of the chocolate and the folding of the wrapper. When we look at this item, everything seems correct at first: the shape of the chocolate, the colour and the folding of the paper. Yet one thing is missing: the trademark, the element that turns it into a uniquely identifiable product and gives it its identity. At the same time we are presented with a challenge: To what extent is our perception irreversibly dominated by commercial patterns before we even look at an item?

— Felix Kucher

Trademarked logos, packaging designs and corporate colours are contemporary icons that have left indelible marks on our collective memories. Many people do not realise that companies place not only logos and colours under copyright, but also the appearance of a product (e.g. the shape of a chocolate bar or the folding of the wrapper). In his work Chips Tüte (Bag of Crisps, 2016), Rozbeh Asmani highlights this parasitical relationship between business and shape (the appropriating of colours and shapes by industry) in two ways: The elements that are patented in a bag of crisps include the size and type of packaging as well as precisely defined full and empty capacities. Without its colourful packet, the bag might be perceived as an anonymous container for any random content, and it is our general commercial background that prompts us to associate the packaging with a certain product or brand.

— Felix Kucher