Some of the plants propagated by The Hop Plant Company are done under a Plant Variety Rights licence for specific grower associations. Supply of these varieties can only be supplied to members of the association. In many of these cases the association has spent a significant amount of time and money in developing these varieties. 

 

 

Plant Variety Rights are an internationally recognised form of intellectual property used to protect unique plant varieties. The application of PVR is similar in principle to the intellectual property protection offered via copyright on books and music and to patents on a wide range of innovative products including biological material. The PVR system delivers protection and stimulates further innovation in plant breeding. By ensuring varieties awarded PVR are freely available to others for use in future breeding programmes. This access is known as the ‘breeder’s exemption’, and this process has significantly underpinned the major advances seen in plant breeding over the past 40 years. The PVR system allows plant breeders to collect royalties on the production and sale of seed of their protected varieties. 

 

 

 

Plant variety rights entitle the holder to prevent anyone doing any of the following acts as respects the propagating material of the protected variety without authority: 

 

• Production or reproduction (multiplication) 

• Conditioning for the purpose of propagation 

• Offering for sale Selling or other marketing 

• Exporting Importing Stocking for any of the purposes mentioned above 

 

The holder of rights can authorise others to carry out these acts on whatever terms and conditions he/she wishes to impose, subject to the safeguard of compulsory licensing. Rights may also extend to harvested material obtained from the unauthorised use of propagating material, but only where the holder has not had reasonable opportunity to exercise his rights. Plant variety rights do not extend to any act done for private and non-commercial or experimental purposes or for the purpose of breeding another variety. 

 

 

 

Some plant varieties may have trademark or patent protection in addition to plant variety rights. Where you see the registered trademark designation ® against a variety name, the variety owner has rights over the use of the name of the variety or any logo or other design associated with it. In Europe, a plant variety may not be patented but a trait or a novel breeding technique may be and where the breeder has been granted such a patent, use of the variety or technique is subject to the requirements of patent law as well as plant variety rights. 

 

 

Entitlements of the rights holder 

Plant variety rights entitle the holder to prevent anyone doing any of the following acts as respects the propagating material of the protected variety without authority: 

 

• Production or reproduction (multiplication) 

• Conditioning for the purpose of propagation 

• Offering for sale Selling or other marketing 

• Exporting Importing Stocking for any of the purposes mentioned above 

 

The holder of rights can authorise others to carry out these acts on whatever terms and conditions he/she wishes to impose, subject to the safeguard of compulsory licensing. Rights may also extend to harvested material obtained from the unauthorised use of propagating material, but only where the holder has not had reasonable opportunity to exercise his rights. Plant variety rights do not extend to any act done for private and non-commercial or experimental purposes or for the purpose of breeding another variety.