Rights granted by Belgian plant breeders' rights and scope of protection

Plant breeders' rights give a number of exclusive rights to the holder with respect to the exploitation of a plant variety. Those rights are limited by some exceptions. Those exclusive rights, which the holder can also license or transfer, allow to take action against third parties who violate those rights.

Exclusive exploitation right

If you are the holder of plant breeders' rights, no one is allowed to perform certain actions with regard to the variety components of the protected variety without your permission.

It concerns the following actions:

1. production or propagation;
2. conditioning for the purpose of propagation;
3. offering for sale;
4. to sell or otherwise commercialize;
5. import;
6. export;
7. stocking for any of the purposes mentioned above.

As the holder of plant breeders' rights, you also have the right to prohibit or authorise the same actions with regard to the harvested material of the protected variety, but only if the harvested material was obtained by unauthorised use of the variety components of the protected variety and you have not had a reasonable opportunity to exercise your right to the variety components. 

Furthermore, as the holder of plant breeders' rights, you also have the right to prohibit or authorise the same actions with regard to products obtained directly from the harvested material of the protected variety, but only if these products were obtained by the non-authorised use of this harvested material and you have not had a reasonable opportunity to exercise your right in respect of this harvested material.

Finally, plant breeders' rights extend to essentially derived varieties. A variety is considered to be essentially derived from another variety (called the "initial variety"), if:

1. it is predominantly derived from the initial variety, or from a variety that itself is predominantly derived from the initial variety;
2. it is clearly distinguishable from the initial variety,
3. except for the differences resulting from the derivation, it conforms to the initial variety in the expression of the essential characteristics resulting from the genotype or combination of genotypes of the initial variety.

Please note that just because you have plant breeders' rights to a plant variety does not mean that you are allowed to market it. 

Awaiting the effective granting of plant breeders' rights...

Even if the plant breeders' rights have not yet been granted, but the application has been filed, the holder may demand fair compensation from any person who has performed an act in the period between the publication of the application for the plant breeders' rights and the grant of the plant breeders' rights, for which after this period he would not have received permission on the basis of the plant breeders' rights.