Have the person providing the plant indemnify you against future litigation. Someone knows whether the material is patented or not, but they are up the sales c

Have the person providing the plant indemnify you against future litigation. Someone knows whether the material is patented or not, but they are up the sales chain from you. If they agree to indemnify you against patent litigation, then they know it's not patented. If they won't, then they either didn't do their job in getting similar assurances from their supplier, or they are hiding something. In general, you work backwards through the stream of commerce indemnification clauses. It's ridiculous overhead for gifts between friends, of course. That's why, for other areas of the law, like theft, we realized hundreds of years ago that you should give people some automatic protections if they were good faith purchasers. (Not 100%, jurisdictions vary, civil and criminal are different.) Not sure why we don't borrow similar provisions for patent law, but I guess Bowman v. Monsanto could do that (if it's not simply remanded on a technicality).