Plant variety rights - the basics

Plant variety rights (also known as plant breeders' rights) provide protection for new varieties of plants, including hybrids. To obtain a plant variety right, the candidate variety must be distinct (ie, clearly distinguishable from any other known variety), uniform in the expression of its distinguishing characteristics and stable after repeated propagation or growth cycles.

Plant variety rights may be sought regionally (for example from the Community Plant Variety Office for European-wide rights) or nationally for individual countries. Typically, the application procedure involves providing plant material of the candidate variety to a testing office where it is grown and examined for distinctiveness, uniformity and stability.

Once a plant variety right has been granted, the holder is entitled to prevent anyone from producing or reproducing, selling, marketing, offering for sale, exporting, importing or stocking the variety without his permission.