Abstract
The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention 1991 (UPOV Convention) recognizes the need to protect plant breeders’ legitimate interests. Without breeders’ innovations, new high-productivity plant varieties can neither be created nor contribute to society as a whole. Without these new varieties, it is impossible to create new high-yield generations of plants for the benefit of society. The absolute protection of breeders’ rights, however, would create many negative impacts for society. In particular, farmers would have to pay higher prices for seeds if breeders’ exclusive rights were to be overprotected, which would also mean consumers having to pay more for basic foodstuffs. This would lead to food insecurity nationally or even globally, in contravention of the right to food as recognized by Art. 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. These situations represent the dilemmas that governments have to cope with in developing national economies. The concept of farmer’s privilege is an exemption that the UPOV Convention recognizes in order to balance benefits between breeders and farmers. Under the optional exception set out in Art. 15(2) of the UPOV Convention, Contracting Parties may adopt the farmer’s privilege exemption in national law. Vietnam’s Law on Intellectual Property contains the farmer’s privilege exemption, yet there are many loopholes regarding this provision, and in reality, its application is limited. This article analyzes European Union regulation on farmer’s privilege and the way in which this exception has been interpreted, and compares and applies it to the Vietnamese law.
Highlights
Farmer’s privilege is a crucial regulatory tool that allows a balance to be struck between the rights of farmers and breeders, albeit that the UPOV Convention is seen as providing a model of protection mostly focused on breeders’ commercial interests
Regulation (EC) No 2100/94 on Community plant variety rights governs issues related to the protection of plant varieties in the European Union (EU) based on the UPOV Convention
Vietnam meets the standards required under the various international agreements of which it is a signatory, more work is still needed with regard to intellectual property right protection of plant varieties
Summary
The UPOV Convention establishes a sui generis legal framework for its Contracting Parties on the protection of newly invented plant varieties. This helps small breeders and biotech developers to increase market access as it reduces the costs and time involved in accessing overseas markets. The UPOV Convention’s objective is to provide and promote an effective system of plant variety protection in order to encourage the development of new varieties of plants, for the benefit of society as a whole. Without breeders’ innovations, new high-productivity plant varieties can neither be created nor contribute to society. the Convention aims to encourage plant breeding among the Contracting Parties. While the UPOV Convention protects breeders’ rights, it allows farmers to save seeds for the crop on their own land. In explaining the word optional, the UPOV Explanatory Notes recommend that Art. 15(2) “should not be read so as to be intended to open the possibility of extending the practical commonly called farmer’s privilege, to sector of agricultural or horticultural production in which such a privilege is not a common practice on the territory of the Contracting Party concerned.” This explanation of Art. 15(2) seems to interfere with the freedom of Contracting Parties to decide what harvested material farmers can keep for further propagation This issue is best left for national regulation on the part of the Contracting Parties, especially considering national strategies for plant structure, which vary by season and region.
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