Chinese Breeders Can Easily Apply for Protection on International Variety Rights

On November 15, 2017, internationalapplication platform for plant variety right was launched in Beijing, throughwhich Chinese breeders can not only apply for plant variety rights protectionwith plant variety protection offices in different countries and regions butalso provide convenient approaches for the introduction of foreign finevarieties.

On January 2017, International Union forthe Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) established electronicapplication system of plant variety rights (PRISMA), which is utilized by 16countries like China, Argentina, Australia, Chile and other countries.Languages including Chinese, English, French, German,Spanish,Norwegian,Romanianand Osmanli can be used to apply for the plant variety rights of potato,soybean, lettuce, apple and rose. Besides, foreign breeders can apply for thevariety rights protection of lettuce and rose in China.

It is known that China issued Regulationsof the People's Republic of China on Protection of New Varieties of Plants in1997 and joined UPOV on April 23, 1999. The applications for new variety rightsof plants witness a constant increase over the past 20 years. The number ofapplications in 2016 reached near 3,000, stably ranking the first among UPOV memberstates.

In order to promote the development ofprotection on China’s new variety of plants in an all-round way, the Scienceand Technology Development Centre, Ministry of Agriculture of the P.R.C signedthe Strategic Cooperation Agreement on Protection for New Variety of Plantsbetween China and Europe with Community Plant Variety Office. Both partiescarried out 3-year cooperation and exchange regarding the system constructionof protection on new variety of plants, acceptance and examination process, studyon variety test technology, exhibition of new variety and protection on varietyrights.

(Source: ChinaIPR)