PVP in the South: caving in to UPOV

PVP in the South: caving in to UPOV

Published Jan 2002

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Developing countries, UPOV and TRIPS compliance

A checklist of which developing countries have enacted plant variety protection laws, and which are flirting with UPOV membership, in the name of compliance with the WTO TRIPS Agreement (Article 27.3b).

The paper draws two conclusions from this data:

  • Despite the threat of trade sanctions from unmet deadlines, less than half (40%) of the developing country members of WTO have implemented TRIPS Art. 27.3(b) at face value by enacting some form of plant variety protection law. This excludes the least-developed countries. Considered together, just a quarter of the WTO members from the South (26%) have PVP legislation in place.
  • Despite the flexibility sometimes associated with the sui generis option in TRIPS Art. 27.3(b), UPOV-type PVP is aggressively becoming a blanket reality in the South.

GRAIN argues that the prevalence of UPOV style legislation is the result of direct pressure from developed countries for harmonised IP protection worldwide and is not in the interests of sustainable agriculture and farmers rights becasue accepting UPOV is the first step to full-fledged patents on life.

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