Legal Protection Of Transgenic Plants

The application of Genetically Modified Technology in plant breeding has thoroughly changed the production mode of plant variety. Having mastered the genetic code of nature, people can creat new varieties of plant which will meet their different needs. Compared with the plants cultivated in conventional way, the Genetically Modified Plants are far beyond the range of natural evolution.They are products of human technology which should be fully protected by the intellectural property law.Basically, there are two kinds of protection modes for the Genetically Modified Plants: the Patent law mode and the variety law mode . With the advanced Genetically Modified Technology, the developed countries in the west always adopt the Patent law mode with strong protective force and highly enforceable level. Compared to this , the developing countries with laggerd technology adapt to adopt the variety law system which has more limitation to breeders'right . Through the comparation and analysis of the two modes, we could find that the patent mode is more valuable either in promoting technology progress or enhancing international competitive ability. Obviously it would be more reasonable to apply patent law to protect the Genetically Modified Plants.However, becase of the particularity of the Plants, which makes them different from the invention of industry, there is a lot of disputation on the patentability of the Genetically Modified Plants. Through the analysis of the substantial requirements for patent, the author holds that the Genetically Modified Plants have overcomed the obstacles traditionally exsited in the way of obtaining patent protection and it would be practical for the special plants to be the objects of patent.Enormous human resource,material resources and finacial resource are needed to cultivated the Genetically Modified Plants. But in our country ,we can only adopt the new plant variety protection regulations, which was constitutedin 1997, to protect the special plants. So , there is a long way to go for our coutry to catch up with the deveopled coutry's standard,. without which, the breeder's beneficial right can not be completely guaranteed, the country's biotechnology can not be deveolped and international competitive power will be hard to enhanced. Hence, the author suggests that it should be urgent to apply the patent law to protect the Genetically Modified Plants and some suggestions have been offered .