Principles of Plant Genetics and Breeding

444 CHAPTER 24
The plant breeder may also give a trademark name to the new plant variety. A trademark is a word, symbol, or design used
to distinguish the wares or services of one person or organization from those of others in the marketplace. The trademark name is
followed by the symbol .
A trademark may be registered with the Trademarks Office to protect it from misuse and imitation. A registered trademark is
one that is entered on the federal government’s Trademarks Register (the official listing of registered trademarks) and is followed
by the symbol ®. Registration of trademarks is not required but is highly recommended. Registering your trademark with the
Trademarks Office gives you the exclusive right to use the trademark across Canada for 15 years. The right is renewable every
15 years thereafter. An application for trademark registration can be filled in online on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office
(CIPO) website. The application then goes through a rigorous examination process to ensure that it meets all requirements of the
Trademarks Act.
Plant variety protection or plant patents?
In Canada, higher life forms (animals, plants, seeds, mushrooms) are not patentable. However, transformed plant cell lines and
plant cell cultures are patentable. Genetically altered plants derived from these cell lines (such as Roundup Ready® soybean) are
registered under the PBR in the regular way.
A method for producing a higher life form may be patentable if this method “requires significant technical intervention by man
and is not essentially a natural biological process which occurs according to the laws of nature, for example, traditional plant
cross-breeding” (CIPO 2005).
The federal agency responsible for granting patents in Canada is the Patent Office, which is part of the CIPO, an agency of
Industry Canada.
In Europe, the European Patent Convention (Section 53) explicitly excludes from patentability “plant or animal varieties or
essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals”. However, the European Patent Office interprets this narrowly,
and patents have been granted on plants since 1999, provided they do not meet the strict UPOV criteria for plant varieties.
For example, plant patents may be granted in Europe if the plants are the product of gene technology.
In the United States, patents are granted to asexually propagated plants (except tubers). Genetically modified plants are
patentable. Plant variety protection is granted to sexually reproduced and tuber-propagated plants.
Protected plant variety and plant patent databases
The CFIA provides on its website a complete and regularly updated list of the plant varieties that are protected in Canada:
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/pbrpov/pbrpove.shtml.
For US plant patents, the USPTO provides full-text and full-page image databases of patents issued since 1976 and of published
applications: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/. For US protected plant varieties, the PVPO posts on its website a regularly updated
public version of the certificate status database: http://www.ams.usda.gov/science/PVPO/CertificatesDB.htm.
For protected plant varieties in the European Union, the CPVO provides a database of the applications and titles in force:
http://www.cpvo.eu.int/. The European Patent Office provides a worldwide patent database: http://ep.espacenet.com/
References and further reading
CIFA. 2002. Date modified: 2002-07-17. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency: Contributing to the quality of Canadian life.
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/pbrpov/10yre.shtml.
CFIA. 2003. Date modified: 2003-10-07. Guidelines for conducting PBR comparative tests and trials. http://
www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/pbrpov/testsessaise.shtml.
CIFA. 2004a. Date modified: 2004-11-19. Proposed amendments to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act to bring existing legislation
into conformity with the 1991 UPOV Convention. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/pbrpov/ammende.shtml.
CIFA. 2004b. Date modified: 2004-01-09. Ten year review of Canada’s Plant Breeders’ Rights Act. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/
english/plaveg/pbrpov/10yre.shtml.
CFIA. 2005. Date modified: 2005-01-13. Guide to Plant Breeders’ Rights – a general overview of the PBR system.
http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/plaveg/pbrpov/guidee.shtml.
CIPO. 2004. Date modified: 2004-06-14. A guide to trade-marks. http://strategis.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/tm/tm_gd_main-e.html.
CIPO. 2005. Date modified: 2005-02-18. Manual of Patent Office practice. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/patents/
mopop/chap12-e.html#12.04.01.
European Patent Office. 1973. European Patent Convention of 5 October 1973. http://www.european-patent-office.org/legal/
epc/e/ma1.html#CVN.
UPOV. 2002. The UPOV aystem of plant variety protection. http://www.upov.int/en/about/upov_system.htm.
UPOV. 2004. International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants: What it is, what it does. UPOV Publication No.
437(E).