Plant Varieties (Proprietary Rights) (No. 24 of 1980).

The Act is divided into 28 sections and 2 Schedules. Schedule 1 contains the conditions regarding grant of plant breeders' rights. Schedule 2 contains provisions on applications and appeals. There is established, under section 3, an office to be known as the Controller of Plant Breeders' Rights which office shall be a body corporate with perpetual succession and power to sue and be sued in its corporate name. Proprietary rights to be known, and which in this Act are referred to, as "plant breeders' rights" may, on an application being made to him in that behalf and subject to the provisions of this Act, be granted by the Controller in respect of any variety of a botanical genus or species, or any variety within such genus or species, being a variety which has a particular manner of reproduction or multiplication or a certain end use, and being a genus or species standing for the time being specified in regulations made for the purposes of this section by the Minister. Where a plant variety is independently bred or discovered by two or more persons,the first of those persons by or in relation to whom an application is duly made under section 4 of this Act shall be the person entitled to a grant of plant breeders' rights as regards the variety (sect. 6). The Minister may make regulations providing for the protection of the proprietary rights of applicants pending the final determination of applications for the grant of plant breeders' rights (sect. 7). Section 8 provides for compulsory licences, whereas section 12 concerns naming of plant varieties. The Controller shall keep a register for the purposes of this Act and shall enter therein particulars of grants of plant breeders' rights which are in force, such particulars of assignments and transmissions of such rights as may be prescribed, particulars of all matters which are required by or under this Act to be entered in the register and of such other matters affecting the validity or proprietorship of grants of plant breeders' rights as the Controller thinks fit (sect. 20).