Cherry season has arrived, and the contents of our refrigerator and diet are skewing SKU 4045, the grocery checkout code for B.C. cherries that is printed on those zip bags cherries are packaged in in local stores.

We’ve no idea what variety of cherries we’re eating. When Nature Boy specifies “Red. Not yellow,” that eliminates Rainier cherries but not much else.

At one time, local grocery stores would reliably advertise lapin cherries and Bing cherries, but the varieties available these days are more varied and less known.

The average cherry shopper/consumer would have no idea whether they were eating, for example, Staccato cherries. In fact, before March, not many people outside of the orchard, fruit breeding, plant patent and related industries even knew Staccato cherries were a thing.

In March, the district court for the Eastern District of Washington reinstated a patent for the Staccato cherry variety developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s fruit-breeding program in the B.C. community of Summerland.

The decision gives the federal agency and its representatives legal grounds to argue that a Washington state farmer has been violating the patent by........

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