Conference “Patents in plants”

On October 7, we held the conference “Patents in plants” together with the National Association of Plant Breeders (ANOVE) and the Spanish Plant Variety Office of the Ministry of Agriculture. The aim was to turn it into a forum for analysis and debate on the situation of the protection of inventions related to plants and plant varieties and their different forms of regulation.

The Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on plants obtained with certain new genomic techniques and derived food and feedstuffs was one of the topics that aroused most interest. This proposal does not address issues related to industrial property, subject left for a report in 2026. However, during its processing in the European Parliament, a proposal for an amendment was presented to establish the non-patentability of plants obtained with new genomic techniques (NTG) and requests the report to be brought forward. This controversy was the subject of debate among the speakers and attendees.

Elisa Rodriguez Ortiz, director of the OEPM, was in charge of welcoming the attendees and speakers. Among them, were Anna Borrás from the European Commission's Directorate General for Health and Food Safety, Gabriel González, head of the OEPM's chemical patent examination area, Lluis Montoliu, Vice Director of the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC), Mª Mercedes Curto Polo, Professor of Commercial Law at the ‘Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia’ (UNED), Francesca Garbato, Manager Intellectual Property and Legal Affairs of Euroseeds and Nuria Urquía Fernández, Vice President of the European Plant Variety Office.

José Antonio Sobrino, Director of the OEVV, closed the conference.

More information

https://www.mapa.gob.es/es/agricultura/temas/medios-de-produccion/semillas-y-plantas-de-vivero/registro-de-variedades/

https://www.anove.es/propiedad-intelectual/sistemas-de-proteccion/