중국의 식물신품종 보호제도에 관한 연구

A Study on the Protection System for New Plant Varieties in China

As genetic resources and knowledge related with genetic resources become objects important to humankind, research and development on genetic resources have become important means to economic development and competitiveness of nations. Among genetic resources, lately, studies on new plant varieties have more importance from a viewpoint of food resources. Breeding new plant varieties needs professional knowledge and techniques and a lot of time and expenses. In order to breed and promote new plant varieties, a system to protect rights of seeds of new plant varieties is necessary. The system to protect new plant varieties is to protect them by acceptance through the patent law. Another thing is to protect them by preparing for an additional bill like a protection law of new varieties of plants. Because meeting patent requirements is hard about protecting plant varieties with that kind of the patent law, difficulties occurred in protection of plant varieties. As an alternative for this, the thing which is planned with other requirements in properties of plants different from just patents in order to protect plant varieties is an agreement of UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants). China joined the agreement of UPOV 1978 on April 23, 1999 and announced acts of new varieties of plants on April 30, 1997. Later, related laws were enacted like detailed rules of implementation of protection ordinances of new plant varieties in agriculture and forestry parts, seeds law on Nov. 1, 2000, interpretation about some problems in dispute hearing of new plant varieties of supreme people's court on Feb. 5, 2001, some regulations about detailed law application problems in dispute item hearing of new plant varieties' rights of supreme people's court on Jan. 12, 2007, and so on. This paper tries to examine main contents of protection ordinances of new plant varieties in China, concrete law application problems of supreme people's court in case of occurrence of disputes on rights of new plant varieties, problems and improvement plans of protection ordinances of new plant varieties.