[caption id="attachment_3085" align="alignright" width="400"] Casper van Kempen speaks at the Asian Seed Congress in Incheon, South Korea. Photo: Steven Layne[/caption]
BRUSSELS: Two years ago, the Anti−Infringement Bureau (AIB) joined APSA as an associate member. At the 2015 General Assembly
Meeting in Goa, India,
Casper van Kempen, AIB’s Managing Director, was elected to be a member of APSA’s Executive Committee. Here, Asia Seed speaks with Mr. van Kempen about AIB and its activities.
What is AIB and what is its mission? The full name is the Anti-Infringement Bureau for IP Rights on Plant Material.
AIB started its activities in 2010, created by a consortium of leading vegetable seed companies, to prevent and discourage infringements of intellectual property rights. In this way, AIB tries to ensure an equal playing field for all operators in the vegetable chain.
What are intellectual property (IP) rights in the vegetable seed industry?
The main types of IP rights in our sector are:
- Plant Variety Protection (PVP). When a breeding company obtains a PVP title for a new variety, it disallows others to reproduce said variety without explicit authorisation of the breeder. This means, for instance, that it is not permissible to reproduce that PVP variety from seeds or cuttings. An exception applies to farmers in countries that have the so-called Farmers Privilege in their law, which allows farmers to use their farm saved seeds on their own holdings for propagation purposes.
- Trademarks. This protects the breeder against fake packaging or misuse of the company name.
- Patents. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, and there are presently very few that have been issued for vegetables.
Why are IP rights important for the vegetable seed industry?
IP rights are crucial for the seed industry as they provide a basis for ensuring returns on the high risk and upfront investments that are needed to create a new plant variety. Unfortunately, infringements of IP rights are as old as IPs themselves.
Why is the AIB needed?
Over the past years, the vegetable seed sector has seen an increase in the illegal reproduction and distribution of its products, resulting in a surge in the number of unauthorised end products in the market. As is the case with piracy and counterfeiting in other sectors, the actual damage to the industry is difficult to measure. However, it is a significant number, estimated to be tens of millions of Euros per year and growing rapidly.
This affects the industry in many ways, with major exporting countries suffering most from infringement, which has particularly impacted the tomato and lettuce trade.
What exactly are the consequences of IP infringement?
There are several. IP rights are designed to encourage investment into new inventions, in this case vegetable plant varieties, and to reward the breeder for that investment. When IP rights are not protected, the readiness to invest in new, strong varieties decreases, resulting in lower growth rates and serious damage to the sector’s innovation and overall development.
Moreover, once a product is reproduced illegally and royalties are foregone, the whole vegetable value chain is affected. Growers, traders and wholesales alike suffer from unequal competition, as the prices of the illegally grown products tend to be lower and therefore more difficult to compete with.
What are the major areas of infringement in respects to the vegetable industry?
This differs for each geographical region. In Asia, a big problem is the misappropriation of parent lines, in legal terms qualified as ‘trade secret’ theft. AIB receives numerous reports from breeders signaling that copies of their hybrids are being sold by unauthorised third parties.
In Europe and the Mediterranean Basin, the propagation of vegetable hybrid crops, which emerged about 10 years ago, has developed into a very large and expanding trade, particularly in Southern Europe. For instance, the development of grafting techniques has spurred a huge increase in vegetative propagation of the tomato plant. It is estimated that vegetative propagation is utilised in about 20 per cent of the total tomato acreage in Spain and Italy, the highest percentage of which is for cherry tomatoes. There have also been a number of documented cases of vegetative propagation of melons, watermelons and eggplants. However, not all vegetative propagation is illegal as not all varieties are PVP-protected, so the primary concern is vegetative propagation of protected varieties.
A major infringement activity found worldwide is the illegal multiplication of seeds of PVP-protected open-pollinated varieties, in particular, lettuce and beans. This is done by seed producers, plant raisers and large specialist growers. It is estimated that for certain lettuce types, infringement exceeds 35%. Many illegally reproduced seeds are marketed and sold under old generic variety names, so AIB keeps a close eye on the market to obtain samples of illegally-copied seeds.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the illegal F2 (hybrid seed) production of protected hybrid onions is very substantial. The problem here is that in many cases the F2 seed is physically very similar to the F1 variety, making it difficult to detect.
Are there any other types of infringements AIB is addressing?
Yes, counterfeit and variety fraud are also recurrent. Counterfeit seeds are sold in fake package, and the seeds in these packages are often not the varieties as indicated on the label. They are instead inferior types of seeds of unknown varieties. The growers who purchase them in good faith are often victim to crop failure.
An example of fraud is when growers order (and pay for) young plants of a certain variety, but receive a different and most often inferior variety. This problem is recurrent in rootstock, and sometimes leads to catastrophic consequences for growers.
What have been AIB’s actions against infringements?
AIB files complaints with enforcement agencies regarding any observed and verified infringements after consultation with the rights holder concerned. This action has been taken many times in recent years in the main affected countries, where very good relationships have been developed with enforcement agencies. In recent years, AIB has raised awareness among plant raisers and growers by filing over 40 legal complaints with authorities. In most cases, the enforcement agencies fully cooperated and made inspections of the suspected companies. As IP piracy very often has a linkage to other illegalities like phytosanitary and seed law offenses, tax evasion, fraud, and unfair competition, many enforcement agencies are welcoming AIB’s denunciations. In several cases, the criminal investigations found proof of organised crime, whereby the illegal operations involved a network of companies active in different countries and continents. Profits from piracy are high. The financial benefits reaped by lettuce growers in Europe, who buy the illegal seed at very low prices, amount to a very significant US$ 400/acre per production cycle. For the Southern part of Italy alone, authorities estimate that the value of undeclared harvested crop from illegally grown cherry tomato plants exceeds US$ 500 million per annum.
What are the prospects of AIB’s actions?
We are confident that we have curbed the growth of IP infringement in countries that have more experience enforcing IP laws, especially in Europe where we have had a positive impact in reducing the scale of illegal vegetative propagation of tomatoes. The actions we triggered in cooperation with enforcement agencies have at least made any potential infringer aware of the risks, and therefore, much more careful. This seems to have at least contained the problem.
In emerging countries with rapidly growing production, infringement is on the rise. This can be partly explained by a shift towards higher-value genetics. Also, the general level of technical skills is rising, opening the door to vegetative propagation. This is the reason that AIB is expanding its activities in these countries.
This interview originally appeared in Asian Seed, Volume 22, Issue 5.
Casper van Kempen speaks at the Asian Seed Congress in Incheon, South Korea. Photo: Steven Layne[/caption]
BRUSSELS: Two years ago, the Anti−Infringement Bureau (AIB) joined APSA as an associate member. At the 2015 General Assembly Meeting in Goa, India, Casper van Kempen, AIB’s Managing Director, was elected to be a member of APSA’s Executive Committee. Here, Asia Seed speaks with Mr. van Kempen about AIB and its activities.
What is AIB and what is its mission? The full name is the Anti-Infringement Bureau for IP Rights on Plant Material.
AIB started its activities in 2010, created by a consortium of leading vegetable seed companies, to prevent and discourage infringements of intellectual property rights. In this way, AIB tries to ensure an equal playing field for all operators in the vegetable chain.
What are intellectual property (IP) rights in the vegetable seed industry?
The main types of IP rights in our sector are:
