GROWING YOUR OWN: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COMMERCIALISATION

We sit down with Andrew Hallinan, Nurseryman and Senior Examiner Plant Breeders Rights at IP Australia, for an overview on intellectual property (IP) and how plant breeder’s rights can help grow your business.

What is intellectual property?

“Broadly speaking intellectual property, or IP, is a type of intangible asset, or ‘good will’ as it is often called in business. It is a product of your own creativity. It could be a new invention or plant variety, an artwork, literary work, branding or many other things. For nurseries, plant varieties and branding are probably the most relevant forms of IP.

What kinds of IP are there?

“IP can be broken up a few ways. Firstly, rights and non-rights. An example of intellectual property that is not a right is a trade secret, like a secret recipe. The only protection you have with a trade secret is keeping it secret. Once it’s not a secret, you lose control and ownership.

Alternatively, IP rights such as copyright, patents, trade marks, designs, and plant breeder’s rights give you legally enforceable controls to protect your idea or asset.

IP rights can be further divided into registered and nonregistered. Plant breeder’s rights, trade marks, patents and designs are all registered rights that are registered through IP Australia.

Why is intellectual property important to our industry?

“Intellectual property is an important consideration for all businesses. For most successful businesses, IP assets are worth more than the physical assets owned by the business, like buildings, land, machinery etc. IP also gives you an opportunity to get recognition for, and derive profit from, your own ideas and your own work.

Intellectual property rights themselves can be used to grow your business by accessing new markets through licensing arrangements or reinforcing brand recognition, and as a result, increasing revenue streams – opening up markets that you couldn’t necessarily access by yourself. You can also sell the property rights as an asset, and sometimes they can be worth a lot of money.

“It is important for people to understand the basics of intellectual property rights, particularly plant breeder’s rights in the nursery context, regardless of whether you're a breeder or a grower".

If I’m a plant breeder, what do I need to consider?

“If you are breeder, plant breeder’s rights give you the opportunity to profit from your plant breeding work. It gives you control of how a new variety is commercialised. It allows for the breeder to not only control who grows the variety but allows you to more easily access other markets that were not necessarily open to you before, using licensing arrangements. Alternatively, you can sell your rights as an asset, just like you would sell a house or building, and make money that way –potentially allowing you to just focus on plant breeding.

If I’m not a plant breeder, what do I need to know?

“If you are not a plant breeder but are still part of the industry, it’s in your interest to know about plant breeder’s rights as well. The reason is, if you commercialise plant varieties without permission, you may be liable for both criminal and civil action, and penalties through the courts. This could lead to fines of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, it’s well worth doing your due diligence and knowing what you can and can’t do with regard to protected plant varieties.”

More information

This is the first in a series of Q&A on how IP can support your business. You can submit questions for Andrew to answer in the next issue of Groundswell via e: Outreach@ipaustralia.gov.au.

In the meantime, head to the IP Australia website for more information: www.ipaustralia.gov.au