Cotton will be the first crop in which transgenic intellectual property protection will expire. Public cotton researchers are uncertain of conditions associated with use of germplasm with expired intellectual property protection. There is ambiguity about the impact of transgenic traits to public accessibility of germplasm in particular, and the general accessibility of materials coming off protection, with or without traits.  There are many questions, including whether soon-to-be-expired PVP germplasm possessing transgenic traits that may be removed from registration can be distributed to the research community.  This has implications for freedom to operate with public domain materials and for responsibilities of genebank curators to keep abreast of registration status. Although transgenic cottons reside in the national germplasm collection, to date the working collection has side-stepped multiple issues involved with the possession, maintenance, and distribution of transgenic materials by excluding these materials from that collection.  However, this practice will not serve the research and improvement communities in the future.