What Are Plant Breeders’ Rights?

Have you bred a superior disease-resistant plant? Or developed a plant with high vigour and predictable outcomes? If you’re breeding unique varieties of plants in New Zealand, you might want to ensure that only you can commercially benefit from your plants.

Plant Variety Rights (PVR) enable breeders to have exclusive rights to sell, export, or produce their unique variety in New Zealand.

Plant Variety Rights are a type of Intellectual Property that lets you market your registered plant variety for a period of up to 23 years for woody plants and vines, and 20 years for other plants.

Why Do I Need Plant Variety Rights?

If you want to profit from your invention, Plant Variety Rights can give you a competitive advantage over the market — enabling you to be the only supplier in New Zealand for a set period of time.

Registering your right gives you the ability to:

• Produce or reproduce the plant variety
• Condition (clean, coat, sort, package, and grade) the material for propagation
• Sell the plant variety as a product
• Export the material

How Do I Register Plant Variety Rights?

To register Plant Variety Rights in New Zealand, you’ll need to go through the following process:

1. Conduct a Plant Variety Rights search.
2. Confirm you meet the requisite time limits. You can only apply for these rights if the plant variety has been sold or propagated in New Zealand for less than one year.
3. File an application with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ). Provide your details, information about the plant variety and its origin, and make an initial case for eligibility.
4. Conduct a growing trial and get provisional protection for your plant variety.
5. File the complete application to get full and ongoing protection for your plant variety.

How Do I Use Plant Variety Rights?

Plant Variety Rights are just one type of Intellectual Property. You may also be able to use Plant Variety Rights alongside other types of Intellectual Property protection, such as patents and trade marks.

Once you have registered your plant variety, it includes the protection of the propagating material of the variety itself and essentially derived varieties.

Essentially derived varieties are varieties of plants that share all essential characteristics of the registered plant variety and could qualify for their own Plant Variety Rights application.

Need Help?

Applying for Plant Variety Rights can seem like a daunting task, particularly as there are many steps that need to be carried out.

Our highly experienced Intellectual Property lawyers can work with you to make sure you can protect your new plant varieties in New Zealand.

Contact us at [email protected] or on 0800 002 184 to get help protecting your plant variety. In the meantime, keep your invention under wraps!

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