No more patents on fruit and vegetable traits

The EU plans to stop granting patents for fruit and vegetable traits in order to give plant breeders free access to the biological material needed to develop new varieties. The European Member States claim that it was never the intention to grant patents for products that result from essentially biological processes. So far, plant breeders have been required to gain the patent holder’s permission before they may use patent-protected material for the development and sale of a new variety. This limits the availability of genetic diversity and hence has a negative impact on innovation in the plant breeding sector, which is continually striving to develop new varieties that can grow under the most extreme conditions. Now that all the Member States agree on the interpretation of the law, the European Patent Office’s patent-granting process must be amended, and it will no longer grant patents for products that result from traditional breeding processes.

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