Act on the Protection of New Varieties of Plants.

The purpose of this Act is to contribute to the development of the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry by providing for matters to protect the rights of breeders of new plant varieties. The Act consists of 137 articles divided into 5 Chapters: General Provisions; Protection of Rights of Breeders; Denominations of Plant Varieties; Supplementary Provisions; Penalty Provisions.
For the purpose of the present Act the term "seed" means the seed as defined in subparagraph 1 of article 2 of the Seed Industry Act; the term "plant variety" means a plant grouping within a single botanical taxon of the lowest known rank, which, irrespective of whether the conditions for the grant of a plant variety right under article 12 are fully met, can be defined by the expression of the characteristics resulting from a given genotype or combination of genotypes distinguished from any other plant grouping, by the expression of at least one of the said characteristics, and considered as units with regard to its suitability for being propagated unchanged.
The Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs or the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries shall keep a plant variety register and register the matters prescribed in Article 52, including: 1. Establishment, transfer and lapse of plant variety rights or limitation on the disposition thereof; 2. Establishment, preservation, transfer, change and lapse of exclusive licenses or non-exclusive licenses, or limitation on the disposition thereof; etc. A plant variety right shall come into existence by completing the registration of establishment pursuant to Article 52 (1) 1. The holder of a plant variety right may establish an exclusive license of the plant variety right for any third person (art.61). The Act further makes provisions, inter alia, for the following issues: plant varieties protectable, managers of plant variety protection for expatriates, scope of agent's authority, representative of multiple parties, reporting on use of electronic documents and electronic signature, application mutatis nutandis of the Patent Act, requirements for protection of plant varieties, novelty, distinctness, uniformity, stability, succession to plant variety rights, claim for right of priority.