Legal Challenges in the Registration of Farmers' Varieties under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001

The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 (PPV&FR Act) is the intellectual property framework developed by India to protect plant varieties while taking into account the role of farmers in agricultural innovation and the conservation of biodiversity. However, many problems remain in the registration of farmers’ varieties. This paper examines whether the existing registration regime is able to protect traditional farmers’ varieties, given that the registration system is predominantly based on formal and standardized plant variety protection. The main emphasis is on the problems farmers face in fulfilling the criteria of distinctiveness, uniformity and stability (DUS) when traditional varieties contain genetic diversity and have developed over generations of farmers. The procedural, technical, evidential and financial problems of registration are also analyzed, along with the question whether small farmers can fulfill all the requirements. The paper further discusses the limited time period for the registration of farmers’ varieties. It also explores the role of traditional farmers in the plant variety protection regime, especially traditional farmers who have conserved, developed or improved such traditional varieties and may also be recognized as breeders. The recognition of such farmers as breeders raises issues about the kind of rights they hold as breeders and the possible conflict between their rights as traditional farmers and their rights under plant variety protection. The study asks whether the present regime properly balances the intellectual property rights of farmers as breeders, on the one hand, and their traditional practices of cultivating, using, exchanging and conserving plant varieties, on the other.