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The current Plant Variety Protection Act is significantly flawed, as it 

 allows the seed of a protected variety to be sold without permission of the 

 owner. Due to this unfair competition, private investment in varietal 

 development research has plummeted in several major crops and is 

 threatened in others. In addition, ambiguous language contained in the 

 current PVP Act causes needless litigation over saved seed between seed 

 companies and their farmer-customers. 



Pioneer supports the right of a farmer to save the seed of a protected 

 variety to plant on his or her own holdings. We also support the position 

 that a farmer may sell seed of a protected variety only with the 

 permission of the owner of the variety. We believe such seed must meet 

 all the requirements of federal and state seed laws. 



Pioneer supports all other PVPA amendments to bring U.S. laws into 

 harmonization with the 1991 update of the International Convention for 

 the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). These amendments are 

 necessary to allow the United States to become a member of the 199 1 

 UPOV Convention and for U.S. farmers to remain competitive in world 

 agricultural markets. 



Before offering our evidence that supports the need for changes to the 

 farmer-to-farmer sales provisions in the legislation, there are other 

 aspects of the bill we strongly support and believe deserve mention. We 

 support extending the term of plant variety protection from 18 years to 

 20 for most crop plants. The bill also slightly broadens the scope of 

 protection, so that we have more effective tools to enforce our rights 

 against infringers. 



We support the concept of "essentially derived varieties'' as defined in the 

 legislation. In the past, it was not uncommon for some seed companies 

 to take an existing commercial variety, make minor "cosmetic" changes, 

 and reintroduce the variety as its own development. This would happen 

 without compensation to the company that developed the original variety 

 and that made it an outstanding performer in the first place. This 

 practice has come to be known in the industry as "plagiaristic breeding," 

 by analogy to copyright principles. 



The seed industry is now in agreement that the practice as it exists today 

 is unfair to those who engage in serious, improvement-directed research. 

 The industry has endorsed changes that will have the effect of permitting 

 the practice to continue, but only when the original breeder is 

 appropriately compensated for his or her contribution. We are pleased to 



