Marcel Bruins, the Editorial Director for European Seed, sat down with Francesco Mattina, the new Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) president, at the Euroseeds 2022 Congress to talk about what the CPVO is contributing to EU society and EU agriculture.
“The CPVO is an agency of the European Union, and we take care of the community plant variety rights system — an intellectual property rights system on plant innovation,” Mattina explained.
“Recently we ran a study on the socio-economic impact of the system in the European Union, trying to also measure the impact of the system on the environment and sustainability in the European Union.”
The sudy was done in coordination with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), and for the first time, they saw a positive impact of the systems due to a number of indicators.
“For example, the improved yield of agriculture, vegetables and fruits,” he said. “We try to analyze all of the sectors, which made the exercise rather challenging.
“It has shown that innovation and protection of varieties has an impact on employment in the European Union. We have also seen and we were rather surprised that more than 90 per cent of our applicants in the EU are SMEs and they hold almost 60 per cent of the plant variety rights.”
On average, an SME has an ownership of 10 community plant variety rights.
“Let’s say, from an economic point of view, if we look at the environment, clearly we have seen indicators that show innovation and protected varieties contribute to the reduction of water-use, and sustainability in general,” Mattina said.
“I would say in a nutshell, that the system is healthy in a way, and all the sectors are contributing to these goals, which are in the end, the sustainable development goals and the contribution to the European Green Deal.”
To hear more about the project, watch the interview above.
