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June 5, 1992 



ASSINSEL STATEMENT REGARDING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW 

 PRINCIPLE OF ESSENTIALLY DERIVED VARIETIES IN THE UPOV CONVENTION 



At the UPOV Diplomatic Conference in Geneva in March 1991, new conditions in 

 relation to essentially derived varieties (e.d.v.) were introduced into a revised 

 convention. The following resolution was adopted: 



'The Diplomatic Conference for the Revision of the International Convention for 

 the Protection of New Varieties of Plants held from March 4 to March 19, 1991, 

 requests the Secretary General of UPOV to set in motion immediately after the 

 closing of the Conference the establishment of draft standard guidelines, for 

 adoption by the Council of UPOV, on essentially derived varieties." 



In response ASSINSEL presents the following statement. 



After careful consideration of the new text Article 14(5) it is concluded that the 

 implementation of this new concept should take the following points into consideration. 



introduction 



In all previous statements ASSINSEL has strongly approved the introduction of the 

 essentially derived varieties (e.d.v.) concept. With respect to the very recent 

 developments in the field of plant breeding and biotechnology and the resulting lack of 

 clarity between the fields respectively covered by patents and plant breeders' rights 

 and the degree of protection which they offer, ASSINSEL considers that the new 

 principle builds a bridge between the two protection systems in the interest of the 

 affected industries. This- new principle will also decrease drastically the possibility of 

 plagiarism in plant breeding. 



ASSINSEL plant breeders are convinced that this new principle brings about an 

 important strengthening of plant breeders' rights without any real restrictions of the key 

 issue of the so-called breeders' exemption. 



It has to be appreciated that the introduction of this new principle into the UPOV 

 Convention represents a step into new territories. As usual with such situations there 

 are uncertainties and doubts. Therefore, at this stage, the national legislators - as well 

 as the UPOV Council - should restrict their statements to general formulation of this 

 new principle and should not go too far into detailed regulations. A too detailed 

 regulation would run the risk that omissions will subsequently become apparent or that 

 future developments will be hampered or not provided for. Furthermore the 

 implementation should be practical and not too complicated. 



As will be shown in the following, this principle mainly involves questions of scope of 

 protection and enforcement of the rights of the breeder. It is, therefore, left to the 

 initiative of the breeder to enforce these rights. 



