Sui Generis Intellectual Property Protection for Plant Varieties

Plant breeding has traditionally been regarded highly valuable due to its importance for public food and nutrition policies. For this reason, plant breeders enjoy a number of incentives, including public investments, tax benefits, and special intellectual property rights. Since patent and trade secret forms of protection remain questionable in regard to plant varieties, the creation of a sui generis system for the legal protection of plant breeding material is strongly encouraged at both national and international levels. This chapter compares the approaches to patentability of plant varieties in the EU and U.S. and looks into the special legal regimes introduced on both sides of the Atlantic, namely the EU system of Community plant variety rights and the U.S. Plant Patent Act and Plant Variety Protection Act. The chapter further aims to answer the question why the EU Community plant variety rights have turned out to be more effective for the protection of plant breeding material than the specific legal regimes enacted in the U.S., where utility patents still remain the most often-used form of protection for plant varieties.