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Plant Breeders' Rights Act, 1976 (Act No. 15 of 1976)

2. Application of Act

 

(1) This Act shall apply in relation to every variety of any prescribed kind of plant if it is new, distinct, uniform and stable.

 

(2) A variety referred to in subsection (1) shall be deemed to be—
(a) new if propagating material or harvested material thereof has not been sold or otherwise disposed of by, or with the consent of, the breeder for purposes of exploitation of the variety—
(i) in the Republic, not more than one year; and
(ii) in a convention country or an agreement country, in the case of—
(aa) varieties of vines and trees, not more than six years; or
(bb) other varieties, not more than four years,

prior to the date of filing of the application for a plant breeder's right;

(b) distinct if, at the date of filing of the application for a plant breeder's right, it is clearly distinguishable from any other variety of the same kind of plant of which the existence on that date is a matter of common knowledge;
(c) uniform if, subject to the variation that may be expected from the particular features of the propagation thereof, it is sufficiently uniform with regard to the characteristics of the variety in question;
(d) stable if the characteristics thereof remain unchanged after repeated propagation or, in the case of a particular cycle of propagation, at the end of each such cycle.

 

(3) If the application of this Act is extended to a kind of plant to which this Act, or any law repealed by it, did not previously apply, the registrar may deem a variety of such a kind of plant which existed at the time of the extension to be new for the purposes of subsection (2) (a), notwithstanding the fact that propagating material or harvested material thereof was sold or disposed of prior to the periods of time referred to in that subsection.

 

(4) If an application, in any country, for the grant of a plant breeder's right in respect of, or for the entering in the official register of varieties of, a variety in fact leads to the grant of a plant breeder's right in respect of, or to the entry in the official register of, that variety in the country in question, the existence of that variety shall, as from the date of the application, for the purposes of subsection (2) (b), also be deemed to have been a matter of common knowledge.

 

[Section 2 substituted by section 2 of Act No. 15 of 1996]