According to the UPOV Conventions, it is up to member states to provide for appropriate legal remedies for the effective enforcement of the Conventions. But UPOV member states are being expected to play a crucial role in providing expensive technical and administrative infrastructure, as well as legally questionable confidentiality arrangements, in order to enable already powerful seed companies to enforce royalty income on the basis of evidence from DNA fingerprints of suspected seeds or plant material.
News
by APBREBES
Today most intergovernmental organisations allow access to proceedings of its meetings. For example, in WIPO, the full report of its various meetings, including interventions and decisions of Member States are publicly available on its website.
by National Farmers' Union of Canada
The National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Union Paysanne (UP) are marking April 17, 2015, the International Day of Peasant Struggle by joining with other Canadian organizations in denouncing the recent passing of Bill C-18, the Agricultural Growth Act, and calling on the Government of Canada to reverse recent changes to the Plant Breeders Rights Act that put Canada under the UPOV ’91 regime.
by GRAIN / La Via Campesina
Seeds are under attack everywhere. Under corporate pressure, laws in many countries increasingly put limitations on what farmers can do with their seeds and with the seeds they buy. Seed saving, a thousand-year-old practice which forms the basis of farming, is fast becoming criminalised.
A new booklet from La Via Campesina and GRAIN documents how big business and governments are moving to stop farmers from saving and exchanging their seeds, and shows how farmers are fighting back.
by DAWN
KARACHI: Fifty non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from across the country have urged the Senate not to pass an important bill the National Assembly quietly passed last month.
by APBREBES
UPOV will be meeting in Geneva for its Spring session from 23-th to 27th March 2015. Its Administrative and Legal Committee (CAJ) will meet on 26th March, the Consultative Committee (CC) on 27th March in the morning while its highest decision-making body, the UPOV Council on 27th March in the afternoon. The meeting of the CC is closed to observers.
The Council
by Third World Network - TWN Info Service on Intellectual Property Issues (Mar15/02)
Sangeeta Shashikant (London): An upcoming UPOV meeting in Geneva will consider a proposal to establish a centralized harmonized system for the administration and examination of PBR applications to be known an “International System of Cooperation” (ISC), by way of a simple “agreement” adopted by the Council, UPOV’s highest governing body.
by ITPGRFA Secretariat
Submissions of information on ITPGRFA interrelations with UPOV and WIPO
by National Farmers' Union of Canada
On Tuesday, February 25, Bill C-18, the Agricultural Growth Act, became law when it received royal assent. The new law, which brings Canada under the UPOV ’91 plant breeders’ rights regime, will come into force by Cabinet order. From now on, seed companies’ exclusive rights to control new varieties of seed have been expanded, they have gained new ways to collect royalty revenue from farmers and a longer, twenty-year royalty collection period (twenty-five years for tree and vine varieties).
by Netnou-Nkoana NC, Jaftha JB, Dibiloane MA, Eloff J.
Netnou-Nkoana NC, Jaftha JB, Dibiloane MA, Eloff J. Understanding of the farmers’ privilege concept by smallholder farmers in South Africa Published in: S Afr J Sci. 2015;111(1/2), Art. #2013-0344, 5 pages. 2015/2013-0344