scholarly journals Law-Driven Innovation in Cereal Varieties: The Role of Plant Variety Protection and Seed Marketing Legislation in the European Union

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 8049
Author(s):  
Serena Mariani

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of EU legislation in shaping innovation in cereal varieties. The research focuses on two fields of law and their relationship, i.e., intellectual property and agricultural law. More specifically, the normative legal investigation concerns the role played by Community plant variety protection and the EU legislation on the marketing of seed and plant propagating material in shaping innovation and stimulating plant breeding of new cereal varieties. The focus is on cereal varieties because innovation in this field has a great socio-economic impact, as well as strategic scientific and environmental implications. Breeding new cereal varieties is essential for the competitiveness of the seed and agricultural sector of the EU, and it can contribute to food security and the achievement of sustainable development goals. The study finds that it is necessary to simplify the existing legal framework by coordinating intellectual property and agricultural law, providing for legislative review and better coherence in order to effectively shape innovation and meet the changing demands of society and the sustainability challenges.

Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1127
Author(s):  
Ju-Kyung Yu ◽  
Yong-Suk Chung

Breeders persistently supply farmers with the best varieties in order to exceed consumer demand through plant-breeding processes that are resource-intensive. In order to motivate continuous innovation in variety development, a system needs to provide incentives for plant breeders to develop superior varieties, for example, exclusive ownership to produce and market those varieties. The most common system is the acquisition of intellectual property protection through plant variety protection, also known as the breeder’s right. Most countries have adopted the system established by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). To be granted plant variety protection, the variety should prove to be unique by meeting three requirements: distinctness, uniformity, and stability. This review summarizes (1) the plant variety protection via UPOV convention, (2) technical methods for distinctness, uniformity, and stability testing via phenotype, molecular markers, and sequencing as well as their challenges and potentiality, and (3) additional discussions in essentially derived variety, value for cultivation and use testing, and open source seed initiative.


Author(s):  
Gert Würtenberger ◽  
Martin Ekvad ◽  
Paul van der Kooij ◽  
Bart Kiewiet

This book explains how the Community plant variety rights system works and provides guidance regarding the field of law relating to the Basic Regulation and other implementing regulations. It gives an idea of how the grant system works, the advantages of Community plant variety rights, and the aspects to be considered in exploiting and defending. It also explains the mechanisms in the Basic Regulation on how infringements of Community plant variety rights should be dealt with, including certain enforcement systems of the EU Member States. This book analyses major aspects that are considered of practical relevance in infringement proceedings under the applicable national law. It elaborates how the case law is limited in comparison with patent infringement proceedings throughout the EU Member States.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guntra A. Aistara

Costa Rica's entry into the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was hotly contested and the subject of a national referendum. For activists opposing the treaty, questions of 'privatizing seeds' through imposing intellectual property rights were among the main concerns raised by the treaty, as one requirement of CAFTA was signing the international Convention on Plant Variety Protection known as UPOV. The threat to farmers' seeds in Costa Rica and many other parts of the world is more complicated than being a clear-cut issue of privatization. Struggles for control over seeds are a crucial part of the political economy of agriculture that are grounded in debates over the significance of the physical and social properties of seeds as a natural resource. This article explores how debates over intellectual property rights to seeds confound simple distinctions between public domain and private property, and the implications for agricultural genetic diversity. Moreover, through the story of Costa Rica's engagement with CAFTA and UPOV, I contemplate the broader effects of the free trade paradigm on reconfiguring ideas not only of property but also of personhood and democracy. I will argue that through reconfiguring the boundary between the public domain and private property in the realm of seeds, recent intellectual property trends also reinscribe the definition of farmers along pre-defined class lines. Through their actions, groups involved offer competing visions of how a local resource should be defined and internationally connected; these visions can be understood as competing visions of political ecology in practice.Keywords: Costa Rica, CAFTA, UPOV, intellectual property, seeds


Author(s):  
L. Bently ◽  
B. Sherman ◽  
D. Gangjee ◽  
P. Johnson

This chapter focuses on the process of registration for trade marks in the UK, the European Union, and other countries. It begins by explaining the differences in procedures and documentation needed in filing trade mark applications at the national, regional, and international levels. The role of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in processing applications in the EU is considered, along with the international filing systems established under the 1891 Madrid Agreement and the 1989 Madrid Protocol. The chapter concludes by presenting possible avenues through which to acquire trade mark protection. It briefly considers the possible impacts of Brexit.


2001 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Cullet

Plant variety protection has come to the fore in the wake of the adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). TRIPS generally imposes the patentability of inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology and specifically mandates the introduction of a form of legal protection on plant varieties. Article 27.3(b) thus states that member states “shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 95-101
Author(s):  
Ognyan Stoichkova

The article deals with the issues related to financing of agricultural industry in Bulgaria from the EU funds and programs. The outcomes of European support under the first and second pillars of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, in which Bulgaria has been participating since 2007, are analyzed. Besides, the positive effects on Bulgaria’s agriculture as well as the problems facing the agricultural sector in the new programming period are highlighted.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (spe) ◽  
pp. 99-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrício Santana Santos ◽  
Daniela de Moraes Aviani ◽  
José Antônio Fernandes Hidalgo ◽  
Ricardo Zanatta Machado ◽  
Stefânia Palma Araújo

Law no. 9.456/97 instituted the Plant Variety Protection Act (Lei de Proteção de Cultivares - LPC) in Brazil, bearing a range of positive aspects for Brazilian agriculture, such as the increase in the number of new varieties in Brazil, both domestic and foreign; incentives for breeding activities in the country; and socioeconomic benefits to the agricultural sector. In 15 years of activity in the sphere of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply (Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento), the National Plant Variety Protection Service (Serviço Nacional de Proteção de Cultivares - SNPC) has consolidated its activity, not only through its credibility in analysis and granting of plant variety protection (PVP) applications, but also through its proactive stance in technical and legal activities in Brazilian and international affairs, as well as involving the scientific community in a participatory manner in the actions it develops. Nevertheless, in spite of these advances, there is a great deal of discussion regarding the limitations to effective exercise of plant breeders' rights caused by some legal provisions of the LPC that may lack refinement.


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