Here we have two kinds of issues:

• At the technical level:
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  The most utilized system for protecting plant varieties at global level is the UPOV Convention and one of its keystones, the Distinction, Uniformity and Stability (D,U,S) criteria. However, the implementation of these criteria is put at risk due to the increasing number of countries member of the Convention that is nevertheless desirable and will continue. The number of varieties of common knowledge is rocketing and the management of reference collections is becoming increasingly difficult. In the coming years we will probably have to reshape the system and several possibilities are under discussion at present, such as the establishment of descriptions databases, the use of DNA markers, etc. But we are entering unchartered waters and we have to be extremely cautious if we don’t want to undermine the whole system. The Intellectual Property Committee of ISF is working closely with UPOV to develop and discuss possible scenarios.
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• At political levels we are facing several issues:
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  A general and lively debate on the "protection of life" and at present we are faced with two opposed forces that can be summarized as follows:
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  • WTO and its "Agreement on the Aspects of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights" known as Trips Agreement, stipulating that "Members shall provide plant variety protection by patent, by an efficient sui generis system or by a combination thereof". This agreement is thus favourable to the protection of intellectual property but it must be noted that this clause is presently under review.
  • At the opposite, at the meetings of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and other international meetings such as the WSSD in Johannesburg, some members and many non-governmental organizations, which are becoming more and more influential, state that intellectual property constitutes an earnest danger for biodiversity and thus should be eliminated for plant varieties and biotechnological inventions.
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  Another important issue facing us is the access to genetic resources for research and plant breeding:

• The Convention on Biological Diversity has recognized the sovereign rights of States over their natural resources (that is a kind of property), and their authority to determine access to genetic resources subject to national legislation. That makes access much more difficult than in the past. The International Treaty on Genetic Resources recently signed at FAO (November 2001) will certainly facilitate access for resources for food and agriculture, but some important crops are at the moment not included.
• The patenting of plant varieties in some countries, mainly the USA, and the insertion of patented traits in PVP’d varieties also drastically limit the access to genetic resources for further breeding. The strict application of the narrow research exemption existing with patent, although we don’t have jurisprudence yet in most of the countries, would limit plant breeding within the germplasm of each company if there is no licence agreement.

We don’t know what the impact will be either on the efficiency of plant breeding or on the structure of the seed industry. We have at the moment an internal debate within ISF on that important issue, most of the members being in favour of facilitating access to genetic resources (see ISF View on Intellectual Property, adopted in Chicago).