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6 

 enable the owner of an "initial" variety to exclude the selling 

 or marketing of varieties that differ only slightly from the 

 initial variety. This concept is the most striking innovation in 

 the 1991 revision of the UPOV Convention. It is anticipated that 

 this change will end the practice of altering just slightly the 

 successful varieties of others, and escaping infringement charges 

 under present law while benefitting from the desirable 

 characteristics of the initial variety. This concept 

 redistributes the right to profit among the owners of varieties, 

 recognizing those who discovered and developed the variety in the 

 first place. It does not extend the rights of owners to the 

 detriment of farmers and others. 



Other changes necessary to bring the PVPA into conformance 

 with the 1991 Convention are more limited in scope and I will now 

 discuss them briefly. 



The use of date of determination would be replaced by the 

 use of date of filing for protection as the basis for determining 

 eligibility for protection. The method of deciding when the 

 filing in another country makes a variety a matter of common 

 knowledge would be established. As the filing date will be a 

 matter of record, the provisions in the current statute for 

 adversarial proceedings relating to date of determination are 

 superfluous and will be removed by these amendments. A provision 

 would be made for determining eligibility for protection when 

 applicants have the same filing date for varieties which cannot 

 be clearly distinguished. 



