| UNDERSTANDING PBR HOME > 1. PLANT BREEDER'S RIGHTS > 1.1 WHAT IS PBR > Page 1.1 More Info |
The key benefit of Plant Breeder’s Rights is to provide an incentive for innovative plant breeding (in the Grains Pool case the judge likened the plant breeder to the patent innovator) by giving the plant breeder the right to exclude others from growing and selling the new variety, thereby providing the Plant Breeder’s Rights owner with the opportunity to gain a commercial reward (Explanatory Memo 2002, para 1). Plant Breeder's Rights provides the framework for commercial return. It does not mandate how, when, or to what extent that commercialisation should occur but the quid pro quo of the "monopoly" right is that the public must have reasonable access to the protected variety - more detail in Section 3.9.4 of this Guide and Section 19 of the PBR Act. Plant Breeder’s Rights are an exclusionary right. The breeder has the rights to the new variety and is therefore able to control the sale and reproduction of the protected variety. The real value of Plant Breeder’s Rights to the breeder is the ability to exclude others from propagating and selling the new variety, paving the way for the breeder to get a commercial return on the investment in developing the new variety by allowing others to use it for a fee (royalty). The breeder can authorise others to deal with the propagating material as outlined in Section 11 of the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994, and can put conditions on how the material can be used. These are contractual conditions and are dealt with in more detail in a separate linked site to emphasise the fact that these are not part of the PBR legislation. Click "More Info" for a summary of some of the limitations to Plant Breeder's Rights.
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