Geneva, Switzerland
April 8, 2011

The Council of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) held its twenty-eighth extraordinary session on April 8, 2011.

Round-up of key developments:

New members of the Union

The Council was informed that the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had deposited its instrument of accession to the UPOV Convention on April 4, 2011, and would become the sixty-ninth member of the Union on May 4, 2011. A full list of the members of the Union is provided as Annex I.

Examination of laws

The Council decided that the Draft Law on the Protection of Plant Breeders’ Rights of the Republic of Serbia was in conformity with the provisions of the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention. Once the relevant Law, on which the conformity was decided, is in force Serbia will be in a position to deposit its instrument of accession to the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention.

Financial contribution

The Council welcomed the news that the Republic of Korea had doubled its number of annual contribution units from 0.75 (CHF 40,231) to 1.5 units (CHF 80,462), effective from 2011*.

Plant Variety Database

The Council agreed that a web-based version of the Plant Variety Database, currently only available in CD-ROM format, could be launched on the UPOV website during the course of 2011. It agreed that the web-based version of the Plant Variety Database should be made freely accessible to all users.

Experience of members of the Union in the Examination of New Plant Varieties

The Council welcomed the report made at the forty-seventh session of the Technical Committee, held in Geneva from April 4 to 6, 2011, that the number of genera and species for which members of the Union had practical experience in the examination of distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS) had exceeded 2,500 in 2011. That number had increased by 19% from 2,254 in 2010, to 2,679 in 2011. The Council noted that information on members of the Union with practical experience in DUS examination was freely accessible via the GENIE database.

A full report twenty-eighth extraordinary session of the Council is available at http://www.upov.int/en/documents/c_extr/index_c_extr_28.htm.

* The finances of UPOV are set out in the UPOV Convention – see Article 29 of the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention (http://www.upov.int/en/publications/conventions/index.html).
 

Website: http://www.upov.int

Published: April 12, 2011