Canberra, February 28 - On the final leg of his mission to Australia, Edgar Krieger, joined by Wendy Cashmore and Alanna Rennie, met with Nik Hulse and Edel Kairouz of IP Australia, Sharon Thomas of the Plant Breeder’s Rights Consultation Group (PBRCG), and David Bennett, the IP Counsellor at the Embassy of Australia in Beijing.
An open and constructive meeting took place. On the agenda were topics such as EDV, the broad application of the farmers' exemption to all crops in Australia, exhaustion, the meaning of "production, "reproduction" and "further production", the use of variety denominations, and the short deadline for delivering of full variety description (12 months) and the lack of formal deadline extension. IP Australia was keen to learn about the views of breeders inviting CIOPORA and its Australian members to contribute more to the discussions on the improvement of the Australian PBR law. IP Australia invited CIOPORA to start the discussions on the range of PBR topics, including EDV, the scope of protection, exhaustion, and Minimum Distance, in PBRCG, which „CIOPORA Australia“ is a member of. The IP Counsellor at the Embassy of Australia in Beijing David Bennett gave an update on the situation in China. He was rather positive on the developments in IP. However, he admitted that so far he was not very much involved in PBR matters. CIOPORA encouraged him to support the Australian breeders in this area in China suggesting the association's assistance with relevant information in this area.