Commercial Transfer Agreements of New Plant Varieties and Materials Thereof

123-129 The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act 2001 of India has been aptly put in place. It takes care of new as well as extant plant varieties. It benefits equally the farmer as also the researcher. Keeping in view its manpower and infrastructure strength in plant research, it is strongly believed that in India in very near future new and improved plant varieties will be developed and legally protected. In case these varieties are really good and find research and/or commercial advantage over the similar varieties existing in the market, need may arise to transfer these varieties from laboratories to the land of their end users, may it be of a researcher or a progressive farmer. To transfer such varieties to generate business and yet retain the rights over the protected varieties, there is a need to sign a plant or material transfer agreement by the inventors of these new plant varieties with their customers. To facilitate negotiation of such agreements, author describes some of the essential clauses that need to be included in such licence agreements.