Plant breeders’ rights

A number of other forms of IPRs, besides patent rights, may also apply to protect elements of biotechnological innovations. Here, we present a brief overview of these IPRs, which include trade secret, plant breeders rights, copyright, database rights, and trade mark. 

TRIPs sets standards for many forms of IPRs—copyright, plant breeders rights, and trade marks—but the provisions relevant to patent rights are particularly significant for biotechnological innovations. To be eligible for patent protection. 

A consultant s report was completed and published in July. Further, a separate group under WIPO and affiliated with the International union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), is studying plant breeders rights protection expecially for genetically engineered plants. 

The success of plant breeders to develop rapeseed cultivars practically devoid of erucic acid stands out as an accomplishment to the potential of genetic manipulation in plants to remove chemical constituents (see Chapter 6). The oil from these new cultivars of rapeseed has an entirely different fatty acid composition compared to the older cultivars of rapeseed, and hence by right should be considered as a new vegetable oil. For example, a typical Canadian and European high erucic acid rapeseed (FHEAR) oil, like mustard oil, is rich in erucic (22 1 n-9) and gandoic (20 1 n-9) acids, while the new low erucic acid rapeseed (LEAR) oil is rich in oleic acid (18 1 n-9) (Table I). The fatty acid composition of LEAR oil resembles that of peanut and olive oil except for linolenic acid (18 3 n-3), which is found in soybean oil at a similar level. 

From the 1950s to the present, Chinese breeders have selected and released more than 200 grape cultivars and advanced lines (those have never been named as cultivars). More than 120 of these have been registered (protected with plant new cultivar rights), 82% of them are table grapes and 16% are wine grape cultivars (Tao et al., 2012)... 

---