{"id":251751,"date":"2023-07-12T20:31:40","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T15:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=251751"},"modified":"2023-07-12T20:31:40","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T15:01:40","slug":"what-is-the-legal-row-between-farmers-and-pepsico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/what-is-the-legal-row-between-farmers-and-pepsico\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the legal row between farmers and PepsiCo?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source: <\/b>The post is based on the article \u201c<\/span>What is the legal row between farmers and PepsiCo?” <\/b>published in<\/span> The Hindu <\/b>on 12th July 2023<\/b><\/p>\n

What is the News?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The Delhi High Court has held that there was \u201cno merit\u201d in the appeal filed by PepsiCo over the patent rights for its \u2018unique potato\u2019 variety.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the case about?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The <\/span>Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights\u2019 Authority (PPVFRA) <\/span><\/a>had revoked PepsiCo\u2019s registration with respect to its potato plant variety, \u2018FL 2027\u2019 (used in Lay\u2019s chips).<\/span><\/p>\n

The rights were revoked on the grounds provided under Section 34 (grounds for revocation of registration) of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001 (PPV&FR).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Against this judgment, Pepsico went to Delhi High Court.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is FL 2027?<\/b><\/h2>\n

FL 2027 is a potato variety with high dry matter and low sugar content better suited for making chips.<\/span><\/p>\n

This variety was developed in 1996 by Robert W Hoopes, a US breeder employed with Frito-Lay Agricultural Research, a division of PepsiCo Inc.<\/span><\/p>\n

PepsiCo India was granted a certificate of registration for FL 2027 as an \u201cextant variety\u201d on February 1, 2016.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The validity period \u2013 during which nobody else could commercially produce, sell, market, distribute, import or export it without the breeder\u2019s authorisation \u2013 was six years from the date of registration and extendable up to 15 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is <\/b>Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Act, 2001(PPV&FR)?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Click Here to read<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

What is <\/b>Section 34 of the PPV&FR Act?<\/b><\/h2>\n

According to Section 34 of the PPV&FR Act<\/b>, the protection granted to a breeder may be revoked by the authority on the following grounds:<\/span> 1)<\/b> grant of a registration certificate is based on incorrect information furnished by the applicant<\/span> 2) <\/b>registration certificate was granted to an ineligible person<\/span> 3) <\/b>when the breeder does not provide the registrar with the required documents <\/span>4) <\/b>failure to provide an alternative denomination for variety registration in case the earlier variety provided is not permissible for registration<\/span> 5)<\/b> failure of the breeder to provide the required seeds for compulsory license <\/span>6) <\/b>failure to comply with the acts, rules, regulations and directions issued by the Authority and <\/span>7) <\/b>if the grant of the registration certificate is against public interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did the PPVFRA revoked Pepsico’s patent right over FL 2027?<\/b><\/h2>\n

PepsiCo had sought the registration of FL 2027 variety as a \u201cnew variant\u201d instead of an \u201cextant variant\u201d in its application in 2012 despite furnishing the date of its commercialisation in India to be 2009.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, to be registered as a \u201cnew variant\u201d an additional requirement of \u2018novelty\u2019 in addition to \u2018distinctiveness\u2019, \u2018uniformity\u2019 and \u2018stability\u2019 must be satisfied one year before the date of filing of the application for registration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The court held that FL 2027 could not fulfill the criteria of novelty and was only eligible for registration under \u201cextant variety\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Will this ruling impact investor confidence in India\u2019s IP regime for protection of plant varieties and breeder\u2019s rights?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Probably not. The High Court has merely faulted PepsiCo for wrongly applying for registration of FL 2027 under the category of \u201cnew variety\u201d and giving an incorrect date for its first commercialisation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on the article \u201cWhat is the legal row between farmers and PepsiCo?” published in The Hindu on 12th July 2023 What is the News? The Delhi High Court has held that there was \u201cno merit\u201d in the appeal filed by PepsiCo over the patent rights for its \u2018unique potato\u2019 variety.… Continue reading What is the legal row between farmers and PepsiCo?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,7965,9],"tags":[10498],"class_list":["post-251751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-miscellaneous-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704901115},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}