The ‘get the cat sprayed or neutered’ is great, because backyard breeders and feral cats are things you don’t want running around. Requiring spay/neuter is a good thing to do. I wouldn’t accept any contract that says I’m just renting a pet (the ‘you must return the pet to us’) condition, that means it’s not actually my pet, and I’d hate to get sick and have to ‘turn in’ a pet to someone I don’t know instead of finding them a home with a friend.
They’re absurd at least in a legal sense, because when you buy something, you generally get the unrestricted right to use and dispose of it as you see fit. The conditions described by the OP are not unusual for things that you license, rent, or lease (like software, or a car, or real estate), but practically unheard of for things you purchase outright. Can you think of any other physical object you can buy where the seller gets to dictate how you must use it and what you must do with it when you want to relinquish your ownership?
In the case of most reputable breeders, I don’t think this clause means you necessarily have to return the pet to them if you can’t keep it–if your friend can provide a suitable home for the pet, I’m sure most breeders would be fine with transferring the contract over to the friend (not requiring more money, obviously, but getting the same stipulation about giving them right of first refusal if they have to re-home the pet). They just don’t want the animal ending up at the pound or dumped somewhere. I have no issue with that.
You’re simply wrong. The condition the OP wrote, and similar conditions that I’ve seen in restrictive adoption contracts either explicitly says that if the buyer/adopter ever wishes to give up the pet, they have to get the approval of the breeder. There is absolutely nothing in the condition posted (or ones that I’ve seen) that states that places any limits on what the breeder does or what they choose to factor into a decision, it’s entirely at the breeder’s discretion. What this (and other similar contracts) says is that that if you ever decide to give up the pet, the breeder is free to take the pet and resell it, and has absolute veto over decisions you make about finding a new home ‘your’ pet. Maybe you’ll get lucky and the breeder/shelter is nice, but signing a formal written contract and then expecting the other party to adhere to conditions that you’d like but aren’t in the contract is just stupid. Think about it - if they actually agree to the limits you stated, why aren’t those limits in the contract text?
Fortunately for me I don’t care about pure breeds, and there are plenty of places to adopt from that don’t require a ‘you don’t actually own your pet’ contract to adopt, so this is relatively academic to me.
All I’m referring to is my personal experience. I’ve had five purebred cats (three Russians, two Singapuras) from four different breeders, and all of them have been reputable and very much invested in finding good, loving homes for all their kittens. I’m not saying it can’t be different with other breeders, but I find the “breeding is bad period full stop and everything breeders do is for their own selfish personal gain” mentality to be frustrating. Backyard breeding is bad. Responsible breeding (of cats, horses, dogs, or whatever) is different. Whether an individual person approves of it or not is their business and none of mine, but my personal experience has been different.
I’ve got to agree. I mean a right to first refusal is one thing but also demand that it be included in any future sale forever? Does anyone know of these kinds of provisions being tested in court?
One way the ‘no-breeding’ part of such contracts is through the breed registry.
When we sold horses with the gelding clause in the contract, we notified the Registry that the animal had been gelded on X date, or that gelding was pending – after that, they would not register any progeny of that horse.
I suppose a dishonest buyer could not geld the horse, and still breed horses, and sell them as unregistered (‘grade’) horses. But that would be silly – they sell for half or less of the price of a registered purebred horse. Why spend the money to buy a purebred registered stallion only to breed unregisterable, cheap foals?
Ah, puppy and kitten rainstorms. Fun times!
Back to the OP, I have adopted various dogs, and one cat, from the local Dumb Friends League. They have a similar stipulation: If you cannot keep the pet for any reason, you must contact us. I did have to get rid of one pet, and it made me very sad but he had to go. So I contacted them, and they took him. And I hope they found him a more suitable home, anyway I like to think they did. On a farm somewhere, you know?
A friend of mine bought a Russian Blue kittycat who was breeding stock, but SHE was not allowed to breed him. Her contract called her a co-owner and said she would bring him back to the breeder for the purpose of breeding him to a female cat selected by the breeder, but she would not otherwise let this cat reproduce, and then when the cat was 3 or 4, he would be neutered and at that point she would be his owner. (Breeders don’t mind if you “own” the pet instead of “adopting” it; rescues call it “adoption.”)
Try taking a music CD that you purchased, and make copies and advertise them for sale – see how long before the record company lawyers come after you. Very similar to breeding animals and selling them. And you hadn’t even signed a contract that specifically prohibits reproducing the music CD, like you did with the animal.
I can’t imagine the sale price of a horse that is required to be neutered is the same as a “purebred registered stallion”. And half price is still more than zero.
Certainly not. Our horses sold as non-breeding geldings were sold much cheaper than ones we sold as a breeding stallion. (Though a well-trained riding horse is certainly valuable. Most male horses are gelded and used for this, rather than remaining stallions.)
Our contracts included both prices, the price we were selling him at for non-breeding use, and the ‘penalty’ price if the buyer failed to have him gelded. And that price was set very high, 3-4 times the sale price, to strongly discourage the buyer from violating the contract. (It probably was higher than the realistic market value of the horse as a stallion.)
This has nothing to do with sale, because you did not buy the copyright to the music. All you bought was one particular copy of it. You are free to use that physical copy however you see fit (insofar as copyright is respected, which generally means no public performance and no making further copies) and to sell it, give it away, or destroy it when you’re done. I am not aware of sellers of music routinely trying to abridge those rights in the sale contract. (Of course, they rather notoriously try to do so via technological and legislative means, but this is not what we are talking about.)
As far as I know, there is no legal concept analogous to copyright in the area of animal husbandry.
I’m curious, if you can’t afford a lawyer to review a contract before you sign it, what is your plan when the breeder’s lawyer comes after you for breaching it? Always remember that free legal advice, particularly from people in another country with an entirely different legal system, is actually worth less than you paid for it.
Ontario has a civil court system that will hold you accountable for failing to honor a contract. If you are looking for an assessment on how likely you are to prevail in that court system with your specific contract, hire a fucking lawyer. No real lawyer will answer that question for you on a message board because providing legal advice without a lawyer/client relationship in Canada is very messy for liability reasons.
Hence the need for contract terms to supply what is not already available as background law.
Effectively, you are only buying a license to the cat. It’s an unusual selling strategy, but I don’t know why it would be unenforceable. And again, if you think of the cat’s genome as the breeder’s intellectual property (the cat itself being simply the hardware on which the genetic code runs), the terms of the contract look analogous to an ordinary software license and copy-protection strategies.
If that’s the way the law looks at a cat, I’m pretty sure I would have heard about it before now. It’s not possible to copyright a genetically engineered organism in Canada, so how can it be possible to exercise (effective) copyright over a selectively bred one? Even if it were possible to copyright an organism, this would make the many of the contract terms listed by the OP redundant; there would be no need for the buyer to explicitly agree to refrain from activities that the law already states to be illegal.
^There are trademarked/patented plants that are sold with the warning they are not to be propagated.
I posted earlier, but seriously, OP, if you want a cat, just get one. Your local shelter likely has a fine one, who would be happy if you would provide a forever home.
All my cats have a forever home. My vacuum machine and my broom do just fine at keeping the hair down. None of my cats are special, or purebred; they’re just shelter cats I’ve adopted. Or barn cats I’ve adopted from a farmer friend.
But they have a home, my home. They are great company. When I encourage them to play with a toy, they often play. And if they don’t feel like playing, they look me in the eye as if to say, “Are you serious?” They are cats, after all.
And the nice thing is, when I wake up in the morning, they are there next to me, often purring.
OP, maybe you’d be better off with a cat from a shelter. There will still be terms and conditions, but not nearly so onerous.
Bully for Oregon, then. Canadian law makes no provision for patenting or trademarking plants. The question comes up often enough that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office even has a FAQ about this, where the answer is “You cannot register a trademark if it consists of a plant variety denomination (when a right is granted to the owner for control over the multiplying and selling of reproductive material for a particular plant variety)…”
Anyway, a cat is not a plant, and neither is it possible to patent even an animal in Canada.
While the cite was from Oregon State University, they were discussing US law. Correct, a plant is not a cat, but you were talking about “organisms” and both cats and plants are organisms.
From the article:
Since cats cannot reproduce asexually, there’s no real parallel. Asexual reproduction creates an exact duplicate of the original organism on the genetic level, so there’s a reason why patent or copyright law could apply. Sexual reproduction most emphatically does not. It’s more like buying a tool that you use to create something else.