What is a breeder's right?

• It is a right consisting of the recognition by the State, through the granting of a breeder's title, in favour of a natural or legal person who, through a breeding process, has obtained and developed a plant variety of any genus and species, which must be new, distinct, stable, and uniform.

What rights does the breeder's title confer?

• By virtue of the breeder's title, the State protects and grants the following rights to the holder:
  • To be recognised as the breeder of a plant variety.
  • This right is non-transferable and imprescriptible.
  • To use and exploit, exclusively and temporarily, by himself or by third parties with his consent, a plant variety and its propagating material, for its production, reproduction, distribution or sale, as well as for the production of other plant varieties and hybrids for commercial purposes.

Why are Plant Varieties protected?

• The registration of varieties consists of administering and coordinating the system that promotes the generation and transfer of technology in plant varieties in order to increase agricultural production through the integration of a technical and regulatory framework whose effective and timely operation allows national and international producers to exploit better varieties within a framework of legal certainty and equitable retribution.

Period of Protection

• The Federal Law on Plant Varieties establishes that plant breeders' rights will have a duration of:
  • Eighteen years for perennial species (forest, fruit, vines, ornamentals) and their rootstocks, and.
  • Fifteen years for species not included in the previous paragraph.
  • These periods shall be counted from the date of issue of the breeder's title and, once they have elapsed, the plant variety, its use and exploitation shall pass into the public domain.

Requirements

• The Federal Law on Plant Varieties states that for a plant variety to be eligible for protection, it must meet the following requirements:
  • Novelty. This characteristic is met by the plant variety or its propagating material, which at the time of filing the application:
    • They have not been disposed of in national territory, or have been disposed of within the year before the filing date of the application for a breeder's title, and
      They have not been disposed of abroad, or the disposal has taken place within the six years before the filing of the application, in the case of perennials (vines, forest, fruit and ornamental plants), including their rootstocks, and within the four years before the filing of the application, in the case of other species.
  • Distinctness. A plant variety shall have this characteristic if it is technically and clearly distinguishable by one or more relevant characteristics from any other variety, the existence of which is known at the time when protection is applied.
  • Stability. A plant variety shall have this characteristic if its relevant characteristics remain unchanged after successive propagation.
    Uniformity. A plant variety shall have this characteristic if it is sufficiently uniform in its relevant characteristics, subject to the variation that may be expected from its propagation by seed or vegetative propagation.
  • Denomination. It shall be considered as its generic designation. In order to be approved, it must be different from any other existing in the country or abroad, comply with the other requirements established in the regulations of this Law, and not be identical or confusingly similar to a previously protected variety.