“Plant protection authority sets right its potato blunder”

News: Recently the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Authority has revoked the registration of PepsiCo’s potato variety FL 2027. It was used in the manufacture of its Lay’s chips. 

This means that farmers can cultivate this variety freely without the threat of penal action for violating intellectual property rights (IPR). 

What is Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Authority 

Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights (PPV&FR) Authority has been established under PPV&FR(Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights) Act, 2001 to grant Intellectual Property Rights to plant breeders, researchers and farmers who have developed plant varieties (new and existing). 

Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act was enacted in 2001 to comply with the World Trade Organization’s requirements on laws to protect IPRs(Intellectual property rights) in agriculture. 

To remove the apprehensions of the farming community in India regarding the Act, the authority included a chapter making the rights of farmers’ paramount over those of breeders. This chapter also promised to protect the traditional practice of reusing and sharing seeds. 

How is Indian law different from global practice? 

Developed countries follow the framework laid out by the International Union for Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV) called the UPOV convention. 

This convention protects breeders’ rights and bars farmers from reusing saved seeds or exchanging them with other cultivators. India has not joined UPOV till date. 

To read more about the revocation of the Pepsi co’s Potato variety(FL 2027) issue- 

https://forumias.com/blog/india-revokes-pepsicos-potato-patent/ 

Why PepsiCo registered FL-2027 as an extant variety instead of a new one? 

UPOV focuses only on registration of the newly bred varieties that meet specified standards, but the Indian law even allows registration of the varieties that were once publicly available and were used freely by the farming community. 

Recently, Corporate entities and public institutions are registering more and more extant varieties to take leverage of this loophole. 

Source– This post is based on the article “Plant protection authority sets right its potato blunder” published in Down to earth on 15th Dec 2021.