Beijing, China
26 January 2011
Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Science, Technology and Education
On 25 Jan 2011, the Department of Science, Technology and Education (DSTE) of the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and the Supreme People’s Court held a national seminar on protection of the rights of new agro-plant varieties in the provincial capital Hefei of Anhui Province. The participants discussed issues related to enforcement of laws to protect the rights with joint efforts.
In his speech, Jin Kesheng, Vice President of the Intellectual Property Right Court under the Supreme Court, required judges engaged in trials over the rights of new plant varieties must effectively fulfill their judicial duties to meet expectations of seed enterprises and research institutes about protection of the rights. Judges in this field must protect the independent innovations and have a full understanding of this new type of judgment for true verdicts of disputes over the rights in a highly effective way. To this end, judges must bear the overall interests in mind, increase awareness of cooperation, give conciliation paramount consideration, follow the principle of associating conciliation with judgment, improve coordination of connected cases, and insist on the principle of full-scale compensation.
In his speech, Shi Yanquan, the vice Director General of DSTE pointed out that to protect the rights we need to make efforts in the following aspects:
- Shore up the legal foundation for protecting the rights;
- Create new ways and means to protect the rights; and
- Seek mechanism to associate law enforcement in government administration for the rights with judicial protection.
As Shi said, MOA has initiated a series of actions to crack down on violation of the rights as well as on making and selling of counterfeit and shoddy goods, accelerate the establishment of seed markets with fair competitions, and promote faster development and use of new varieties with IPR. For example, up to now, nearly 30 000 of inspections have been mad of seed enterprises by a total of 73 000 of law enforcement personnel, some 40 counterfeit goods making dens smashed, 830 cases investigated and dealt with, 925 tons of fake seeds seized, 46 cases handed over to judicial organizations, and eight persons arrested. As a result, more than 63 million yuan of economic loses have been retrieved. In addition, 37 cases of corn and rice right violations have been investigated and dealt with, and a total of 0.5 million tons of seeds and over 7 million yuan involved. All these actions have brought about good social effects.
Shi indicated that MOA and the IPR court would work together in closer cooperation to research and analyze difficulties and top concerns in judicial and administrative protection of the rights, develop a long-term mechanism and provide protective screen for such protection in order to safeguard legitimate rights and interests of breeders, promote progress and innovation in seed science and technology, and sharpen the competitive edges of China’ seed industry in the world market.
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