JIPO pushing for law to protect plant breeders

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THE Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) says it is working on legislation to facilitate the protection of new varieties of plants for local breeders.

“If you are a person who is breeding a new variety of rose, aloe vera or cannabis plant, you could seek to have that registered as an intellectual property right at JIPO, and that could protect you from persons who would want to use or copy your plant right without your permission,” JIPO’s Deputy Director and Legal Counsel Marcus Goffe disclosed at this week’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange.

JIPO pushing for law to protect plant breeders



No one owns plants, only God who created the world owns them, not you, not me. Plants are for the benefit of us all. How many plants overseas you have benefited from Jamaica? Copying one's plants? Then whenever a plant grows, and anyone copies that plant, they are in violation? Who created and own these plants in the first place.



Plant Patents And Trademarks Could Limit Spread Of Some Flora

The intricacies of plant patenting came home for me this past year with a shipment of strawberry plants.

Strawberry plants send out runners, thin stems on the ends of which new plants form, which themselves take root and bear fruits and send out more runners. Those daughter plants forming at the ends of runners are useful for filling in a strawberry bed as well as for transplanting elsewhere to make a new bed.

But these particular plants that I bought last spring were a patented variety (Chandler). So transplanting those daughter plants would constitute a crime.

Plant Patents And Trademarks Could Limit Spread Of Some Flora