|
4.4.2 ESSENTIALLY DERIVED
The minimum distance between varieties to establish Distinctness has been a major issue for PBR Offices and the UPOV Council. As a result the 1991 UPOV Convention introduced the concept of Essential Derivation, which was then picked up in 1994 in Sections 40 and 41 of the Plant Breeder's Rights Act 1994.
A plant variety is taken to be an essentially derived variety of another plant variety if:
 |
(a) |
it is predominantly derived from that other plant variety; and |
| (b) |
it retains the essential characteristics that result from the genotype or combination of genotypes of that other variety; and |
| (c) |
it does not exhibit any important (as distinct from cosmetic) features that differentiate it from the other variety. |
The UPOV system and therefore the PBR Act (Section 16) provides an exemption from PBR for use of the propagating material for further plant breeding (this is referred to as "freedom to operate"), to allow the widest access of source material for the development of new plant varieties (Sections 2.5 and 3.9.2 of this Guide ). This can promote incremental breeding. The Report from the Expert Panel on Plant Breeding addressed the issue of Essential Derivation in some detail - click "More Info" below.
|
