Collection systems for royalties in wheat an international study

Abstract

This project has been carried out by a Working Group comprised of members of the Field Crops Section of the International Seed Federation. Results are freely available to all ISF members and UPOV member countries to enable a comparison of the effectiveness of different Intellectual Property (IP) protection mechanisms and royalty collection systems. The International Union for Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) provides a legislative framework and is the most widely used sui generis system for the protection of breeders’ IP in varieties they have created. These laws allow breeders to collect royalties in return for the use of their varieties, which funds further research and the development of new, improved varieties. Breeders in different countries adopt diverse systems for the collection of plant variety royalties. These may be collected at any suitable stage of the crop production cycle, but IP owners typically make the collection at the earliest reasonable stage of distribution. Current legislation, structure of the seed business and prevailing farming practices in each country have an important influence on the type and effectiveness of the local royalty collection system. This study reviews the various mechanisms for protecting IP in plant varieties, analyses the different systems for collecting royalties arising from plant variety protection laws and considers the legal, political and practical farming factors that influence the efficiency of the royalty collection process. Market data from 14 states have been assembled by members of the Working Group. The present study is limited to wheat and attempts to relate the efficiency of royalty collection in each state to the prevailing IP protection mechanisms, enforcement tools and other measures in place. The relationship between the efficiency of royalty collection and the number and type of IP protection mechanisms and enforcement measures in place is analysed for each state included in the study. A discussion of the results and key influencing factors is presented for each territory examined.