Agriculture IP protection to stimulate industrial innovation

It is essential to provide stronger intellectual property protection in agriculture to stimulate industrial innovation, experts said, calling for efforts to strengthen the utilization of technological achievements in the field.

They made the remark and suggestion at a seminar on agricultural IP protection on Saturday, discussing how to encourage agricultural innovators and revitalize villages by the rule of law.

The seminar, which was jointly held by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court and the Beijing Pinggu District People's Court, was one of the activities during the 2024 World AgriFood Innovation Conference.

While stressing the importance of technological application in agricultural development, Yang Dongxia, head of a legal research center with the Administration and Management Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said that the IP protection system and relevant protective measures in agriculture should also be continuously optimized.

"The protection of IP rights related to seeds need to be all-round and strengthened," she suggested.

Lei Yanzhen, a judge from the Intellectual Property Court with the Supreme People's Court, China's top court, shared how they solved cases on new varieties of plants with other experts at the seminar, adding that more judicial efforts have been made in handling disputes involving seeds.

"It's not only necessary to enrich services involving the protection of agricultural IP rights, but also to provide training and increase research to enhance ability of transforming or utilizing the IP rights," said Zhang Yi, deputy head of the Department of Agricultural Technology Transfer of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

In addition, a total of 10 concluded cases involving agricultural IP rights, such as new varieties of plants, patents, trademarks, technical secrets and software copyrights, were also made public, showing China's determination and exploration in promoting agricultural development by rule of law.