Yes, when you seek protection for your plant variety, you need to register it in your country of interest. As the territorial principle applies here, the protection is only granted within the country in which you have registered your plant variety. Exception from this is for instance the EU where plant variety registration on union level is valid throughout the territory of all EU member states.

You can also choose a „cheaper“ version of protection and trademark the name of your plant variety. However, only the name will have trademark protection and plant variety as such will lack protection so there is much to consider before doing so. If you have any questions regarding the right strategy for you, we will gladly advice you more on this issue.

Novelty, distinctness, uniformity and stability of the variety are the preconditions for plant variety protection grant.

More international information about registration of plant variety can be found here.

For EU plant variety registration look here.

For the list of national legislation regarding plant varieties registration in UPOV countries, look here.

Once your plant variety is registered you have exclusive right to authorize everyone else for its production, reproduction, exporting, importing, offering for sale, selling, marketing and a few other related rights.

The UPOV member states mostly grant the protection for 20 years from the date of the grant of the breeder’s rights. For trees and vines this period is 25 years.

There are various ways of monetizing your plant variety rights. Two main options are that you either use your novel plant variety to get competitive edge in your market area and second is that you sell your rights to someone who can use it as his competitive edge. Another very popular option is to licence your plant variety to someone else and gain passive income regularly.

The authorization (consent) of the breeder is always required for the selling of seed of a protected plant variety by any person.

Yes, the major plant variety registration systems allow such registration.

Yes, there are actually two main regional plant variety protection systems and these are the European Union system which covers its 27 members and the African Intellectual Property organization which covers 17 member state countries. So once you register your plant variety through these systems, your protection is valid in all member state countries.

Only the breeder of a new plant variety can protect his or her new plant variety.