The Supreme People's Court (SPC) recently issued the Provisions on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law to the Trial of Cases Involving Disputes over Infringement of New Plant Variety Rights (II), which has come into effect on July 7, 2021.
This new judicial interpretation has five highlights:
- it extends the scope of protection, clarifies that the object of variety right protection is not restricted by the breeding method, and extends the scope of variety right protection to the act of promising to sell and to help infringement links such as acquisition, storage, transportation, processing and treatment for others' infringement;
- it enhances the protection, improves the timeliness and effectiveness of judicial protection, introduces punitive compensation;
- it reduces the burden for protection, stipulates situations where the burden of proof can be shifted in a proper manner, provides availabilities for order for production of documents and consequences for evidence obstruction.
- it explains the principles, clarifies the exemption of scientific research, exhaustion of rights and legal source defense; protects the right of farmers to self-propagation and self-use in accordance with the law while prevents the abuse of "farmers' privilege" to implement infringement.
- it standardizes the identification process, and clarifies the selection of appraisers, identification methods and conditions of re-identification.
http://www.ipraction.gov.cn/article/gzdt/ywdt/202107/348395.html
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