Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001
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This article is penned by Sarthak Gupta, a law student from Institute of Law, Nirma University. This article is a legislative study of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001.

Introduction

To accommodate the foundation of a powerful framework for the assurance of plant assortments, the privileges of farmers and plant raisers and to energize the improvement of new assortments of plants, it has been viewed as important to perceive and to ensure the privileges of the farmers in regard of their commitments made whenever in preserving, improving and making accessible plant hereditary assets for the advancement of new plant assortments. The Government of India sanctioned “The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Act, 2001” receiving sui generis framework.

This Indian enactment isn’t just incongruous with International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), 1978, but it also has adequate arrangements for securing the interests of open division reproducing foundations and the farmers. The Act takes account of the commitments of both farmers and breeders in plant breeding and also provides for the implementation of TRIPs, which underpin the particular financial interests of many partners including private, open and review organizations, and of farmers obliged to acquire property.

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The genesis : the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights

In India, rural and agricultural research including the advancement of new plant assortments has to a great extent been the worry of the legislature and open section organizations. Prior to this, India didn’t have any enactments to secure the plant assortments and, truth be told, no prompt need was felt. Notwithstanding, after India became a signatory to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) in 1994, such an enactment was required. Article 27(b) of this agreement requires the part nations to accommodate insurance of plant assortments either by a patent or by a viable sui generis framework or by any mix thereof.

Subsequently, the part nations had the decision to outline enactments fitting their own framework and India practiced this choice. The current Indian Patent Act, 1970 avoided agribusiness and agricultural strategies for creation from patentability. The sui generis framework for insurance of plant assortments was created coordinating the privileges of reproducers, farmers and town networks, and dealing with the worries for impartial sharing of advantages. It offers adaptability with respect to ensured genera/species, level, and time of insurance when contrasted with other comparable enactments existing or being planned in various countries. The Act covers all the classifications of plants, with the exception of microorganisms. The general and types of protection assortments will be informed by the gazette following the implementation of the Act in accordance with the appropriate guidelines and regulations.

History of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act

The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act was enacted in 2001 and discussions took place in the nation after drawing on how licensed innovation rights ought to be presented in Indian horticulture after the nation joined the World Trade Organization in 1995 and consented to actualize the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

The decision before India had to take was to either sanction a law that ensured the interests of cultivating networks or to acknowledge the system of plant reproducers’ privileges given by the International Union for Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV Convention). The last alternative was dismissed basically in light of the fact that the current adaptation of UPOV, which was embraced in 1991, denied the farmers the opportunity to reuse ranch spared seeds and to trade them with their neighbours.

Along these lines, in The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, India presented a section on Farmers’ Rights, which has three legs:

  • one, farmers are perceived as plant raisers and they can enlist their assortments;
  • two, farmers occupied with the protection of hereditary assets of landraces and wild family members of financial plants and their improvement through choice and safeguarding are perceived and remunerated; and
  • three, ensuring the customary acts of the farmers of sparing seeds from one gather and utilizing the spared seeds either for planting for their next reap or offering them to their homestead neighbours.

Objectives of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2000

The objective of the act acknowledges, to set up a compelling framework for the insurance of plant assortments, the privileges of farmers and plant reproducers, and to energize the advancement of new assortments of plants. To perceive and secure the privileges of farmers in regard to their commitments made whenever monitoring, improving, and making accessible plant hereditary assets for the advancement of new plant assortments.

To quicken rural advancement in the nation, ensure plant reproducers’ privileges and to animate speculation for innovative work both in the open and private part for the improvement of new plant assortments. To encourage the development of the seed industry in the nation which will guarantee the accessibility of top-notch seeds and planting material to the farmers.

Implementation of the Act

To execute the arrangements of the Act the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture, and Farmers Welfare built up the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority, 2001. The chairperson is the chief executive of the authority. Other than the chairperson, the authority has 15 individuals, as advised by the Government of India (GOI). Eight of them are ex-officio individuals speaking to different departments/ministries, three from SAUs and the State Governments, one delegate each for farmers, ancestral association, seed industry, and ladies association related with horticultural exercises are assigned by the Central Government. The Registrar General is the ex-officio member secretary of the authority.

General functions of the Authority

  • Registration of new plant assortments, basically inferred assortments (EDV), surviving assortments;
  • Developing DUS (Distinctiveness, Uniformity, and Stability) test rules for new plant species;
  • Developing portrayal and documentation of assortments enlisted;
  • Compulsory listing offices for all assortment of plants;
  • Documentation, ordering, and listing of farmers’ assortments;
  • Recognizing and remunerating farmers, network of farmers, especially inborn and provincial network occupied with protection and improvement;
  • Preservation of plant hereditary assets of financial plants and their wild family members;
  • Maintenance of the national register of plant varieties; and
  • Maintenance of the National Gene Bank.

Convention countries

Convention countries implies a nation which has consented to a global show for the security of plant assortments to which India has likewise acquiesced or a nation which has the law of assurance of plant assortments based on which India has gone into an understanding for allowing plant raisers’ privileges to the resident of both the nations. Any individual if applies for the enlistment of an assortment in India within a year after the date on which the application was made in the show nation, such assortment will, whenever enrolled under this Act, be enlisted as of the date on which the application was made in show nation and that date will be esteemed with the end goal of this Act to be the date of enlistment.

Plant Varieties Protection Appellate Tribunal

There is a momentary arrangement by which it is given that until the PVPAT is built up, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) will practice the ward of PVPAT. Therefore, the Plant Varieties Protection Appellate Tribunal (PVPAT) has been set up by delegating technical members. All requests or choices of the registrar of authority identifying with an enrollment of assortment and requests or choices of the registrar identifying with enlistment as specialist or licensee can be bid in the Tribunal. Further, all requests or choices of authority identifying with advantage sharing, renouncement of an obligatory permit, and installment of pay can likewise be offered in the Tribunal. The choices of the PVPAT can be tested in the High Court. The Tribunal will discard the intrigue inside one year.

International Union for Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV Convention)

The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is an intergovernmental association with a home office in Geneva (Switzerland). UPOV was built up by the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. The Convention was received in Paris in 1961 and it was changed in 1972, 1978 and 1991.  The strategy of UPOV is to ensure compelling plant safety arrangements to enable the improvement of new plant ranges to promote society. The UPOV Convention gives the premise to individuals to support plant rearing by giving raisers of new plant assortments, a licensed innovation right: the producers correct.

In the instance of an assortment ensured by a raiser’s correct, the approval of the reproducer is required to proliferate the assortment for business purposes. The reproducer’s privilege is conceded by the individual UPOV individuals. Only the reproduction of another plant assortment can ensure that new plant assortment. It isn’t allowed for somebody other than the raiser to get insurance for an assortment. There are no limitations on who can be viewed as a reproducer under the UPOV framework, a raiser may be an individual, a farmer, an analyst, an open organization, a privately owned business, and so forth. However, India isn’t apart as a member.

Notable highlights of the Act

Authority

The Central Government will set up an Authority to be known as the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority. It will consist of a director and fifteen individuals as delegates of various concerned services and offices, seed industry, farmers associations, inborn networks, and State-level ladies’ association, and so on.

Eligibility

For an assortment to be qualified for enrollment, it must fit in with the standards of curiosity, peculiarity, consistency, and strength (NDUS), as portrayed beneath under Section 15 (1)– (3):

For the motivations behind the Act, another assortment will be esteemed to be:

(a) The novel, if, at the date of documenting of the application for enlistment for insurance, the engendering or collected material of such an assortment has not been sold or in any case discarded by or with the assent of its raiser or his replacement for the reasons for misuse of such assortment.

(i) In India, sooner than one year,

(ii) or outside India, on account of trees or vines sooner than six years, or, in some other case, sooner than four years, before the date of documenting such applications.

Given that a preliminary of another assortment that has not been auctioned or in any case arranged off will not influence the privilege of insurance.

Given further the way on the date of documenting the application for enrollment, the spreading or collected material of such assortment has gotten a matter of basic information other than through the previously mentioned way will not influence the rules of an oddity for such assortment.

(b) Distinct, on the off chance that it is obviously recognizable by at any rate, one basic trademark from whatever other assortments whose presence involves basic information in any nation at the hour of documenting the application. 

(c) Uniform, if subject to the variety that might be normal from the specific highlights of its spread, it is adequately uniform in its basic attributes.

(d) Stable, if its basic qualities stay unaltered after rehashed engendering or, on account of a specific pattern of proliferation, towards the finish of each such cycle. The assortment will be exposed to such uniqueness, consistency, and solidness tests as will be endorsed.

Application structure

Each application for enlistment should go with the accompanying data as mentioned in Section 18 (a–h)]:

(a) division allowed to such assortment by the candidate;

(b) an oath depended on the candidate that such assortment doesn’t contain any quality or quality arrangement including eliminator innovation;

(c) the application ought to be in such structure as might be determined by guidelines;

(d) total visa information of the parental lines from which the assortment has been determined alongside the topographical area in India from where the hereditary material has been taken and all such data identifying with the commitment, assuming any, of any farmer, town network, foundation or association in reproducing, advancing or building up the assortment;

(e) an announcement containing a short portrayal of the assortment, drawing out its qualities of curiosity, uniqueness, consistency, and strength as required for enrollment;

(f) such charges as might be endorsed;

(g) contain an assertion that the hereditary material or parental material procured for reproducing, advancing or building up the assortment has been legitimately gained; and

(h) such different points of interest might be endorsed. The conditions expressed over (a–h), will not have any significant bearing in regard to utilization for enrollment of farmers’ assortments.

The time period of protection  

The authentication of enlistment given under Section 24 or subsection 9 of Section 23 will be legitimate for a long time on account of trees and vines and six years on account of different harvests and might be investigated and restored for the rest of the period on an installment of such charges as might be fixed by the principles made for this sake subject to the conditions that the absolute time of legitimacy will not surpass.

(i) on account of trees and vines, eighteen years from the date of enrollment of the assortment;

(ii) on account of surviving assortments, fifteen years from the date of the warning of that assortment by the Central Government under Section 5 of the Seed Act, 1996, and

(iii) in the other case, fifteen years from the date of enrollment of the assortment.

Installment of annual charge

The authority may, with the earlier endorsement of the Central Government, by notice in the Official Gazette, force an expense to be paid yearly, by each reproducer of an assortment, operator and licensee thereof enlisted under this Act decided based on advantage or sovereignty picked up by such raiser, specialist or licensee, by and large, in regard of the assortment, for the maintenance of their enrollment under this Section 35(1) of the act.

Breeder’s right

The testament of enrollment for an assortment given under this Act will present a restrictive right on the raiser or his replacement or his specialist or licensee, to create, sell, advertise, appropriate, import, or fare the range under the Section 28 (1) of the Act.

Researchers’ right

The researchers have been given access to secured assortments for true blue exploration and research purposes mentioned under Section 30 of the Act. This Section states, ‘Nothing contained in this Act will forestall (a) the utilization of any assortment enrolled under this Act by any individual utilizing such assortment for directing investigations or exploration; and (b) The use of a range by any person as an underlying source for a diverse assortment gave rise to the requirement of approval of the raiser of the range when the recurrent use, as parental line, of such range is important in the creation of such a newly created range.’

Farmers’ right

The farmers’ privileges of the Act characterize the benefit of farmers and their entitlement to secure assortments created or rationed by them [Chapter VI of the Act]. Farmers can spare, use, sow, resow, trade, offer and sell ranch produce of a secured assortment with the exception of the offer under a business advertising game plan (marked seeds) mentioned under the Section 39(1)(i)–(iv) of the Act. Further, the farmers have likewise been given assurance of blameless encroachment when, at the hour of encroachment, a farmer doesn’t know about the presence of reproducer rights mentioned under Section 42 of the Act.

A farmer who is occupied with the protection of hereditary assets of landraces and wild family members of monetary plants and their improvement through choice and conservation, will be entitled in an endorsed way for acknowledgment and award from the Gene Fund, gave the material so chosen and protected is used in assortiments registered in accordance with the Act as a contributor of qualities.

The normal execution of an assortment is to be revealed to the farmers at the hour of an offering of seed/spreading material. A farmer or a gathering of farmers or an association of farmers can guarantee pay as per the Act if an assortment or the proliferating material neglects to give the normal execution under given conditions, as asserted by the raiser of the assortment.

Communities rights

The privileges of the networks as characterized, accommodate remuneration for the commitment of networks in the advancement of new assortments in quantum to be controlled by The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act Authority under Section 41 (1) of the Act.

Registration of essentially derived varieties

The breeder of the basically determined assortment will have indistinguishable rights from the plant reproducer of other new assortments, which incorporate creation, selling, promoting, and dissemination, including fare and import of the assortment. The other qualification standards for grant of enrollment are likewise equivalent to for new assortment enlistment under Section 23(1), (6) of the Act.

Compulsory license

The authority can give an obligatory permit if there should be an occurrence of any objections about the accessibility of the seeds of any enrolled assortment to open at a sensible cost. The permit can be conceded to any individual intrigued to take up such exercises after the expiry of the time of three years from the date of issue of declaration of enlistment to embrace creation, dissemination, and offer of the seed or other engendering material of the assortment under the Section 47(1) of the Act.

Benefit-sharing

Sharing of advantages accumulating to a breeder from an assortment created from indigenously determined plant hereditary assets has likewise been given under Section 26(1) of the Act. The authority may welcome cases of advantage sharing of any assortment enrolled under the Act and will decide the quantum of such honor in the wake of finding out the degree and nature of the advantage guarantee, in the wake of giving a chance to be heard, to both the plant raiser and the claimer.

Legitimately procured parental material

Section 18(j) in regards to information to be submitted alongside an application, requires the candidate to confirm that the hereditary or parental material utilized for reproducing the assortment has been legitimately procured. Such a revelation would be troublesome in situations where the identification data identifying with the material has not been recorded. Further, it would not generally be feasible for a raiser to get data identifying with the commitment of a rancher, town network, and so on since there may not be a bona fide wellspring of such data. Such data, if not accessible, might be left to the Authority to conclude, which can welcome cases later through media/open notification, and so on.

National Gene Fund

The National Gene Fund to be comprised under the Act will be credited thereto:

(a) The advantage of sharing from the raiser.

(b) The yearly expense payable to the authority by a method of eminences.

(c) By the remuneration given to the networks as characterized under Section 41(1).

(d) Contribution from any national and global association and different sources.

The fund will be applied for disbursing shares to benefit claimants, either individuals or organizations, and for compensation to village communities. The fund will also be used for supporting conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources, including in situ and ex-situ collection, and for strengthening the capabilities of the panchayat in carrying out such conservation and sustainable use, under Section (45) of the Act.

Integrated implementation

There is a requirement for the viable and incorporated usage of different new acts/bills concerning biodiversity, condition, and seed, which have some interphases due to the regular wear, that is the ‘seed’. These are in the zone of advantage, sharing components for conservers of agro-biodiversity and the foundation of a store for cases of advantage sharing. The Biological Diversity Act (2002), and a seed Act (the Seed Act is under amendment) could be incorporated and successfully integrated for smooth implementation simultaneously and through the management of conservation and access to biodiversity and the protection of plant varieties and farmer rights Act. Albeit, some covering issues have been shifted through to bring congruity between the Seed Act and The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, in the New Seed Policy 2002, usage of The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act and Biological Diversity Act might be fit further.

Consideration for effective implementation of the Act

India has opted for a sui generis system of protection of plant varieties and has provided for farmers’ rights, breeders’ rights, researchers’ rights, and equity concerns in the same legislation. All these provisions in one legislation make it a unique Act when compared to similar legislations in other countries. Although, a few countries have provided for farmers’ rights, all types of rights for farmers, viz. as a breeder, conserver, seed producer and consumer have not been considered elsewhere in the world. It is this uniqueness of the Act which poses many challenges for its effective implementation. The balance between breeders’ rights and farmers’ rights could be tough to strike. A critical analysis of the provisions in the Act is therefore essential for its effective implementation.

Way forward

The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act is a successful sui generis framework creating harmony between plant reproducers’ privileges alongside ranchers’ privileges and specialists’ privileges. The act of little, minimal ranchers to trade the gathered material with others is fundamental for their work and rehearsals to a vast extent both in India and the major part of Asia-Pacific’s creative nations. All endeavors are being made by The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, Authority to actualize various arrangements of The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act and furthermore to make the accessibility of value seeds of enlisted assortments yet, in addition, to help ranch families for preservation and reasonable utilization of hereditary assets remembering for situ and ex-situ assortments and for reinforcing the ability of the partners in completing such protection and feasible use.

The ranchers can exploit this Act to get IPR on their developments as enhancements in plant assortments and furthermore for their work in their land race and customary assortment protection and preservation. A portion of the significant difficulties which we predict are:

  • Popularization of farmers’ job in preservation and advancement of new assortment and readiness of database of the equivalent for granting ranchers and cultivating networks and enrollment of farmers’ assortments.
  • Mainstreaming and commercialization of enlisted ranchers’ assortments.
  • Notification of ranchers’ assortments under Seeds Act, 1966.

Conclusion 

As of late, the Government of India in their National Intellectual Property Rights Policy has demonstrated the number of filings and enlistments by the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority requesting to offer help to different partners for expanded enrollment of new, surviving and basically determined assortments of plants. It has additionally underscored to set up joins between the Authority and Agricultural Universities, Research Institutions, Technology Development, and Management Centers, and Krishi Vigyan Kendras and encourage the advancement of seeds and their commercialization by ranchers. It makes the authority increasingly capable of concentrating on techniques for mainstreaming of enlisted ranchers’ assortments and to take reproducers rights as visualized in the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001, to each concerned partner and make India as a harbinger in the execution of not exclusively ranchers’ privileges yet additionally the raisers’ privileges.

References 

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