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 2024 is NOK 2040,-. The fee should be paid to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority according to the details above.

Information on the origin of the plant material and traditional knowledge

According to the law on plant breeder's right § 4, third paragraph, information shall be given about the origin of the plant material that the variety originated from (parent varieties) and traditional knowledge used in the breeding, in accordance with the Act of 15 December 1967 No. 9 relating to patents § 8b first to third paragraph.

The application shall include information on the country from which the inventor collected or received the material or the knowledge (the providing country). If it follows from the national law in the providing country that access to biological material or use of traditional knowledge shall be subject to prior consent, the application shall state whether such consent has been obtained.

If the providing country is not the same as the country of origin of the biological material or the traditional knowledge, the application shall also state the country of origin. The country of origin means for biological material the country from which the material was collected from its natural environment and for traditional knowledge the country in which the knowledge was developed. If the national law in the country of origin requires that access to biological material or use of traditional knowledge shall be subject to prior consent, the application shall state whether such consent has been obtained. If the information set out in this subsection is not known, the applicant shall state that.

When plant material has been acquired in accordance with Article 12 nos. 2 and 3 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Plant Treaty), a copy of the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA), must be attached to the application instead of the information mentioned above as mentioned in article 12 no. 4 in the Treaty.

Traditional knowledge

Traditional knowledge is knowledge that is linked to genetic material and that has been developed, used, preserved and transferred by an indigenous people or local community. Traditional knowledge includes, among other things, technical skills, methods and learning methods that have been used, preserved and transferred jointly between generations within an indigenous people or local community.

Declaration on utilization of genetic material under the Nagoya protocol.

In addition to the duties that follows the law on Plant Breeders' Rights, the use of genetic material or traditional knowledge associated with genetic material originating in other countries are to be declared to the Norwegian Environment Agency through Electronic application centre, cf. Regulation on the use of Genetic Material Originating in Other Countries pursuant to the Nature Diversity Act § 60.

This regulation is Norway's national implementation of the The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Norwegian Environment Agency is the designated national checkpoint in Norway and shall, without undue delay, pass on the information received pursuant to § 3 to the International Information Exchange Mechanism and to relevant competent authorities in the supplier and country of origin.

The regulation has an exception for information on utilization of genetic material acquired in accordance with Article 12 nos. 2 and 3 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Plant Treaty).

For more information: Sampling and utilization of genetic material from nature - Norwegian Environment Agency.