Pl2—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 31,1981
Court
MISSION, Kan. Far
mers are the real winners,
seedsmen say, in a recently
completed, precedent-sett
ing court case which upheld’
plant breeder’s rights under
the Plant Variety Protection
Act of 1970.
A Pendleton, Oregon
federal court jury has found
Farmtenals, Inc, Baker,
Oregon quilty of illegal sales
of Lud barley, a variety
owned and marketed in the
U.S by North American
Plant Breeders, Mission,
Kansas Lud had been
granted US. protec
tion under PVP in 1977
“The precedent of this
case assures farmers a
continued supply of im
proved, high-quality crop
varieties from plant
breeders m the private
sector,” said L C Nelson,
president of NAPB
“This verdict tells the
breeder that his investment
m developing new hybrids
and varieties is indeed
protected under the law
Therefore, the farmer can
expect the private sector to
continue the search for
better crops Ultimately,
better crops mean higher
returns for the farmer ’ ’
NAPB was awarded
$7,051 55 in the litigation and
has sought an injunction
prohibiting Farmtenais’
further propagation and sale
ofLud barley
“We felt damages were
important, but really our
mam concern was that PVP
be upheld,” Nelson said.
“Therefore, we rejected an
out-of-court settlement, and
it became a test case. ”
The suit was the first to go
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upholds firm’s right
to trial since the law was
passed in 1970 Other cases
have been resolved out of
court
This case highlighted and
upheld three important
aspects of the Plant Variety
Protection Act. First, under
PVP, Lud variety barley
was to be sold by variety
name only and as a class of
certified seed
NAPB charged Farm
tenals with openly ad
vertising and selling cer
tified Lud seed under the
name of “Crud” Farm
tenals said that this did not
constitute a sale of Lud
under its variety name
However, the jury’s
verdict rejected the legality
of selling a protected variety
under a similar name.
A second defense
disallowed was Farmtenals’
contention that it is common
practice in the industry to
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sell uncertified seed of
protected varieties as
“variety unstated ”
The court ruled the con
tention not applicable to the
case as it was based solely
on practices in the lawn seed
industry
The court also rejected the
defense that the “Crud” seed
was a mixture with six to
eight percent of seed ot otner
barley types and therefore,
by definition, was not cer
tifiable
Nelson said the “Con
tamination” argument was a
major reason why NAPB
took the case to court. It
wanted to test whether a
sheller could by-pass PVP
by selling mixed or con
taminated seed
The Plant Variety
Protection Act was passed
by Congress to protect the
breeder’s investment in
developing new varieties of
to plant variety protection
agricultural seeds PVP
allows the breeder to obtain
a fair return from that in
vestment through seed sales
of his protected new
varieties
Improved crops are the
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Plant variety protection
laws are not unique to the
United States, they have
existed in Europe since the
1940’s where they served
similar purposes to the U S
law.
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