Brookings, South Dakota
July 14, 2009
The South Dakota Board of Regents,
as the governing body for South
Dakota State University and the South Dakota Agricultural
Experiment Station, has instituted five lawsuits in federal
court to enforce laws governing wheat varieties using the Plant
Variety Protection Act.
The lawsuits, filed today in federal court in Sioux Falls, focus
on the spring wheat varieties Traverse and Briggs that have been
developed by nationally recognized wheat researchers at South
Dakota State University and are owned by SDSU. This federally
protected seed can only be sold legally as a class of certified
seed. The lawsuits allege that five particular producers
knowingly sold or offered the seed for sale without legal
authority, without proper seed certification or without
legitimate seed dealer licenses.
The lawsuits have been filed in order to protect producers in
South Dakota and in the Upper Midwest who act in accordance with
the Plant Variety Protection Act, according to Kevin Kephart,
vice president for research at South Dakota State University.
“Our principal goal is to support farmers who rely on the
continued development of better wheat varieties for their
farming success,” Kephart said. “It is in the long-term best
interest of the entire wheat industry to respect the existing
laws and regulations.”
The action taken by the Board of Regents is part of a much
larger industry-wide PVP educational and enforcement effort that
includes other notable public, taxpayer-funded research
universities such as Kansas State University, Colorado State
University and Oklahoma State University. These universities
have won cases against seed violators in federal courts.
Recently in Kansas, a producer accused of infringing a variety
developed by Kansas State agreed to a $150,000 judgment.
The PVP Act provides legal intellectual property protection to
developers of new varieties of plants that are either sexually
propagated by seed or asexually propagated by cuttings or
tubers.
Bristol area producer Leo Warrington said the alleged behavior
hurts all wheat growers in the region because it withholds money
legally designated to fund wheat development work. Warrington is
owner of Warrington Seed and also served on the board of
directors for SDSU-based South Dakota Foundation Seed from 2002
to 2007, ending as vice chairman. Warrington Seed has grown
public wheat varieties and currently produces seed for AgriPro
and Westbred.
“We need more money going into wheat research. Currently, wheat
has been falling behind other crops,” Warrington said. “When
farmers do the brown-bagging — illegally selling PVP-protected
seed — they take that money away from research.”
Wheat varieties are considered intellectual property. The South
Dakota Crop Improvement Association, founded in 1925, cooperates
with SDSU to use that intellectual property on the public’s
behalf by introducing and distributing seeds and propagating
materials of improved crop varieties.
South Dakota State University was among the early supporters of
an educational cooperative known as the Farmers Yield
Initiative, a coalition of public and private wheat research
organizations designed to support research, education and seed
certification. Through a large-scale educational campaign, which
included direct-mail brochures to more than 100,000 wheat
producers, the developers of improved wheat varieties hope to
inform producers of the value that seed certification and
research investment contribute to the agricultural community. As
part of that same message, the producers received information of
the guidelines of the PVP.
Founded in 1881, South Dakota State University is the state’s
Morrill Act, land grant institution as well as its largest, most
comprehensive school of higher education. SDSU confers degrees
from seven different colleges representing more than 200 majors,
minors and options. The institution also offers 23 master’s
degree programs and 12 Ph.D. programs.
The work of the university is carried out on a residential
campus in Brookings, at sites in Sioux Falls, Pierre and Rapid
City, and through Cooperative Extension offices and Agricultural
Experiment Stations across the state. |
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