Law on the Protection of New Plant Varieties No. 255/1998.

The Law provides for the recognition and protection of Breeders' rights for those breeders involved in researching, developing and breeding new plant varieties of all genera and species in Romania. The Breeders shall fill an application for a patent to the State Office for Inventions and Trademarks, that shall grant it if the new plant variety complies with being new (never sold or otherwise traded or used with or without the Breeder’s consent), distinct (recognizable from a comparison variety as per its genotype or mix of genotypes), uniform (maintaining its characteristics in respect of a comparison variety for both specie and genotype);and stable (preserving these very same features in every repeated propagation cycle). The new variety shall be indicated with a denomination that shall indicate it and that shall be reported in the patent application and anyway it shall identify the variety therefore, as per article 15. Application and patent shall be registered in the National Register of the Variety Patent Applications and the patent, following testing by the State Institute for Testing and Registration of Varieties (I.S.T.I.S.), shall be published in the Official Bulletin of Industrial Property (BOPI- SSPBS).
The variety patent complete with its denomination shall be registered in the National Register of Protected Varieties. Protection is conceded to the individual or Company which discovered,developed and bred the new variety, even if there are more than one breeder and, in case of an employee, if the breeding happens in the workplace, he/she is vested with both rights and eventual remuneration, if not otherwise declared in his/her contract. Breeders' rights have a validity of 25 years that reach 30 in case of new varieties of fruit ,vines ,ornamental trees and forests.