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But in a plant-based system?
They’re emergent properties of biology.

And that creates a thorny issue for intellectual property.
● You can patent a synthetic liposome, but you can’t
patent rice endosperm.

● You can claim a novel buffer formulation, but you
can’t claim ownership of a vacuole.

● You might patent a construct to target protein
expression to a specific compartment—but
enforcing that in a biologically variable, living
system is deeply murky.

Even when parts of the construct (e.g., promoters or
targeting peptides) are patented, the “formulation” is a
function of nature. It’s not manufactured—it’s grown. And
that makes it very difficult to defend legally, particularly
when competitors can achieve comparable effects using
different plant hosts, compartments, or expression
strategies.

This is a profound shift in how drugs are conceived.

In the edible model, you don’t build the formulation—
you cultivate it.

And while that’s a win for scalability, simplicity, and
patient access, it’s a loss for anyone whose profits depend
on defending narrow formulation claims.

The plant becomes not only the drug—but also the
challenge to pharmaceutical orthodoxy:

● You can’t file a patent on photosynthesis.

● You can’t sue a vacuole.

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