“Resolution on Article 14(5)
“The Diplomatic Conference for the Revision of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants held from March 4 to 19, 1991, requests the Secretary-General of UPOV to start work immediately after the Conference on the establishment of draft standard guidelines, for adoption by the Council of UPOV, on essentially derived varieties.”
- In relation to the word “conforms” an important amendment was discussed. The basic proposal made reference to the conformity of the genotype or combination of genotypes. The amendment proposed to introduce the wording as it is in the definition of the variety (Article 1(vi)) which refers to the expression of the genotype or combination of genotypes, in other words the phenotype. The main reason for this change was that there was no clear method to assess the conformity at the level of the genome. This argument received good support and the amendment was approved.
After this very quick review of the discussion during the Diplomatic Conference, it is important to consider some elements of the definition of essentially derived variety as approved in the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention, as reproduced in the introduction of this paper.