Protection

When the Plant Variety Board recognizes a plant breeder's right, she/he has the exclusive right to produce and sell propagation material for that variety (seed, seed cereals, stock plants, seed potatoes etc). This exclusive right is most often exploited by the breeder allowing others to produce and sell propagation material for the variety upon payment of a fee (licence fee, royalty etc). The authorities have no influence on the size of the fee, except in those cases where the fee is set high in order to prevent cultivation of the variety.

The legal basis for the exclusive right, and right to charge a fee, is found in the Act and Regulations relating to the plant breeder's rights. The legal framework came into force on 15 September 1993 and is based on the provisions of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants of 1978. This led, in due course, to Norway becoming a member of The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). UPOV's mission is to provide and promote an effective system of plant variety protection, with the aim of encouraging the development of new varieties of plants, The members of UPOV have a national legal system which grants plant breeders approximately the same rights in every country where the variety is protected.

The Convention has been revised once since 1978. Countries now wishing to join the Union are required to endorse the 1991 Convention.

Protection applies from the time the application is registered with the Plant Variety Board. The licence payer will be entitled to a refund if the breeder collects a fee during the period when the application is being processed, and protection is not subsequently granted.

Varieties which are the subject of an application for protection in Norway, must not have been for sale in the country with the breeder's consent before the date of application.  In other countries, the variety may have been for sale for up to 4 years before the date of application. The period is 6 years for trees/bushes/lignin.

The Breeders' Right can be upheld until the end of the twentieth calendar year after the year of which the right was granted. For trees, wines and lingnins, the Breeders' Right can be continued for twentyfive years. To uphold the Breeders' Right the annual fee must be paid. The deadline of payment of the annual fee is the first workday in the new year.

Protection only applies to commercial exploitation of propagation material for the variety. Propagation of a protected variety for the grower's private use is therefore permitted. In Norway, moreover, anyone, without exception, can make propagation material from protected varieties for their own private use. This also applies to the sale of products, e.g. berries, fruit, vegetables and cereals. This does not apply to ornamentals. Reproduction of propagation material/plants with a view to commercial production of cut flowers or other material for ornamental purposes requires the permission of the breeder of the protected variety.

Protected varieties can be freely used in research and further breeding. This also applies to selection of mutated plants of a protected variety. Such a selection will be eligible for protection as a separate variety.

Application for Plant Breeders' Right

An application for protection should be submitted to the Plant Variety Board on a   standard form. A Norwegian representative is no longer required by Norwegian law. As laid down by Norwegian rule, the application must be written in Norwegian.

Applications for protection can also be submitted by way of the UPOV PRISMA PBR Application Tool.

The application fee must be paid before the application can be registered. Before approval can be granted, the plant material must be examined for Distinctness, Uniformity and Stablitiy (DUS testing) and the application and proposed name for the variety must be published, with a view to possible objections.

Fees and charges

The current fees and charges is found in the  Plant Breeder's Right regulation, § 18. This regulation is not translated to English.

The application fee, which must be paid before the application can be registered, is currently NOK 1 655,- (2023). The Plant Variety Board do not provide invoices. The application fee should be paid to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority according to the following details:

Bank account: 4714.10.01066

IBAN: NO9047141001066

BIC/SWIFT: SNOWNO22

When paying the application fee, please write "application fee PBR + variety denomination of the variety in question " in the free text field to make it easy to match the payment with the application in question.

The receipt to confirm the payment should be enclosed to the application when submitting the application. When the application is submitted by way of the UPOV PRISMA, an additional fee of 90 Swiss franc will be charged by UPOV PRISMA.

The fee to be paid for the DUS-test of a variety varies according to the species and examination office concerned.  Member countries in UPOV collaborate on the testing. The fees, closing dates and plant submission requirements for DUS-tests in EU-countries can be found in the CPVO S2/S3 publication.

The price of a copy of the DUS report is fixed at 350 Swiss francs. The Board will usually buy in copies of earlier reports, if available, rather than initiate their own test.

The annual fee for 2023 is NOK 1980,-. The fee should be paid to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority according to the details above.