An analysis of the European and international plant variety protection systems

Abstract

Modern plant breeding has an increasing importance with regard to the continuously growing demand for plants for nutritional and feeding purposes as well as with regard to renewal energy sources and the challenges caused by climate changes. Apart from classical breeding, technologies have an important role in the development of plants that satisfy the various requirements that industrial and agricultural challenges expect to be fulfilled. As breeding programmes consume time and money, investments in them—resulting in new plant varieties or plant material with specific features—need to be protected so that return of investment is possible. Plant variety rights, as well as patents which protect such results, are of increasingly high importance to the breeders and enterprises involved in plant development programmes. Taking into account the importance of the plant breeding industry, Article 27 TRIPS includes an obligation to provide protection. Such protection is granted in the form of plant variety rights for plant varieties, whereas all other types of plant material may be protected by patents. In this regard, the relationship between the different rights and those internal aspects of the rights that may pose problems for plant researchers, such as the threshold for the granted scope of protection conferred—as emphasized by the authors Llewelyn and Adcock—is of critical importance. Such themes form the core of European Plant Intellectual Property, in which the authors provide an all-encompassing analysis of the European and international plant variety protection systems and the protection under the European patent system for biotechnological inventions related to plants. In its 10 chapters, not only are the essential features of these protection systems outlined but an analysis is also given of the problems involved, arising out of the systems as such and their co-existence.