Wellington/Hamburg, August 12 – Continuing CIOPORA’s efforts to improve New Zealand’s Plant Variety Rights (PVR) Bill, CIOPORA Co-Vice President Wendy Cashmore delivered an advocacy speech before the Select Committee in charge of preparing a report on the bill for the House and recommending changes to the bill.
Emphasizing the high productivity and export value of New Zealand’s green sector, which widely relies on PVR-protected varieties, CIOPORA submitted that New Zealand must accede to UPOV 1991 Act. Furthermore, legislation should be clear and unambiguous to give certainty and balance to all parties interacting with New Zealand’s PVR system, both domestic and foreign. For CIOPORA, such clarity implies a sufficiently broad definition of Essentially Derived Varieties (EDV), in step with the new Explanatory Notes on EDV, currently in front of UPOV; a limited compulsory license provision that solely accounts for public health, animal welfare, and environmental risks; effective provisional protection that could accommodate the long timelines of breeding and pre-commercial variety introduction in horticultural crops; a farmers’ exemption that does not extend to vegetatively reproduced horticultural varieties; and, finally, ensuring that all plant material, capable of producing a true to type plant of the variety, is defined as propagating material.
CIOPORA appealed to the Select Committee to advocate for an upgrade of the current proposed Bill to accede to UPOV 1991, providing for a better-than-standard IP right system that incentivizes breeders’ innovation and nurtures an innovation ecosystem.
The Select Committee is expected to deliver its report on the PVR Bill to the House on November 19.
Useful links:
- The NZ PVR Bill progress
Picture credit: Sultan Auliya, Unsplash.com.