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This Article offers a critical reassessment of US approaches to intellectual property protection for plant innovation. 1 Three developments make this reassessment timely. First, the Supreme Court has finally confirmed that utility patent claims to plants and seeds satisfy the 35 USC § 101 subject matter eligibility requirement. 2 Plant innovation in the United States is now subject to utility patent protection, as well as concurrent protection under the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA). 3 This development might presage a significant realignment in the seed industry's intellectual property portfolio strategy, as seed industry lawyers rethink the desirability of maintaining both PVPA protection and utility patent protection for proprietary varieties. However, little work has been done to explain the role of PVPA protection in a system of concurrent protection, or to develop a coherent policy vision within which the utility patent and …