Brussels, Belgium
April 26, 2013

On occasion of today’s “World Intellectual Property Day” (World IP Day), ESA European Seed Association announces a new tool to facilitate information of breeders on the IP status of plant material: the association is setting up a new patent data-base that shall provide a full overview on the patent status of commercially available plant varieties. The database will become available to the public as of July 1st.

In its position on IP protection for plant-related inventions ESA identified the need for more transparency regarding the patent status of plant varieties and committed itself to increase such transparency.

Despite the fact that there are already a number of publicly available databases in relation to biotech patents, information providing the link between individual varieties and individual patents currently is not available anywhere. But when starting a breeding program, it is of critical importance to breeders to know whether the biological material they intend to use may fall under the scope of a patent application or even a patent already granted. Where such information is lacking, breeders may be discouraged to make use of important genetic resources which, in the end, may even slow down breeding innovation. ESA’s database project is meant to fill this information gap and bring more legal certainty to breeders.

“The database will include information not only on granted patents but also on patent applications as of the moment of their publication. As a start, we will focus on plant varieties commercialized in Europe; but if we’re successful, it is quite likely that we will extend the scope to other parts of the world later”, explains Garlich von Essen, ESA’s Secretary General. “The main feature of the database will be its search function. Users can search the content on the base of a number of criteria such as variety denomination, species, patent number or keyword. Even though we target our members, the breeders in the first place, I believe that the database will become a valuable tool also for public research bodies, public authorities, farmers and growers”.

ESA’s new patent database shall be launched publicly on July 1st; but already as of today, a link to a preliminary site with regular updates is accessible from the ESA website.

Website: http://www.euroseeds.org

Published: April 26, 2013