3.1 SCOPE OF PLANT BREEDER'S RIGHTS
(PBR Owner's Rights)

The Plant Breeder's Rights scheme in Australia is administered under the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994. This Act is consistent with the 1991 revision of the UPOV Convention and replaces the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987, which has been repealed. As a result there are some differences in the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994 and the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987.

Click "More Info" for details of differences between the 2 Acts.

The nature of the right was discussed in Section 1.1 of this Guide; this section on the Regulatory Framework deals with the legal processes for applications, criteria for grant of PBR, and general operation of the system.

The PBR Act was introduced to underpin the competitiveness and sustainability of Australian agriculture and performs an important function in relation to Australia’s Intellectual Property development: “the intent of the legislation, is fundamentally aimed at ensuring that plant breeders have an opportunity to gain reward for their innovation” (Explanatory Memo 2002).

The details of the right are set out in Section 11 of the PBR Act. In relation to propagating material of the registered variety, successful applicants have exclusive rights to:

	(a)	produce or reproduce the material;
	(b)	condition the material for the purpose of propagation (conditioning includes cleaning, coating, sorting, packaging and grading);
	(c)	offer the material for sale;
	(d)	sell the material;
	(e)	import the material;
	(f)	export the material; and
	(g)	stock the material for any of the purposes described in (a) to (f).

In certain circumstances, principally if the breeder has not had a reasonable opportunity to exercise the right on the propagating material, PBR extends to harvested material and, subject to a similar set of qualifications, to products obtained from harvested material (Sections 14 and 15 PBR Act).

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