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- PepsiCo has offered to settle its lawsuit against the farmers who had grown the patented potato variety used in its Lays chips without the company’s permission.
- However,PepsiCo’s has offered a settlement on several terms which are (a)the farmers must give an undertaking that they will not use its registered variety and destroy their existing stocks or (b)farmers must enter PepsiCo’s collaborative farming programme where farmers buy seeds from the company and sell the produce back to the company.
- Recently, Ahmedabad civil court had barred farmers from growing and selling potatoes till next hearing. PepsiCo had complained to the court that the farmers were illegally growing and selling a potato variety FL-2027.
- FL-2027 which is also known as FC-5 is registered as an intellectual property rights(IPR) with the PepsiCo company under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights (PPV&FR) Act,2001.
- However,farmers groups have cited Section 39 of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Act,2001 which specifically says that a farmer is allowed to grow and sell any variety of crop or even seed as long as they don’t sell branded seed of registered varieties.
- The Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Right Act,2001(PPVFR Act) is an Act of the Parliament of India that was enacted to provide for the establishment of an effective system for the protection of plant varieties,the rights of farmers and plant breeders, and to encourage the development and cultivation of new varieties of plants.