Where is the direction of seed industry supervision?

The combination of two certificates into one in production and operation has both advantages and disadvantages.

In this draft revision of the "seed Law," the seed production license and the seed management license are "combined into one," that is, an enterprise can carry out seed production and management in a suitable place by issuing only one license-- a seed production and management license at the place where it is registered.

The purpose of this reform is, first, to reduce administrative licensing and reduce the trouble of enterprises. For example, if a corn seed management enterprise wants to produce seeds in Zhangye, Gansu Province, it can hold its own production and operation license to lease land to local and farmers for seed production, or it can directly entrust local seed production enterprises to produce seeds. This seed production enterprise does not have to apply to the county and district seed management agencies first, and then apply for a license to the seed administration bureau of the province after examination and approval, saving a lot of time. However, before producing seeds, you should put on record with the local seed management agency at the county level, that is, to inform the local area of which varieties I am in, which township and village I am in, which enterprise I am entrusted by, and what area I produce. An enterprise entrusted with seed production shall produce a power of attorney when filing for the record. The purpose of this filing is to strengthen the management of the seed production market.

Second, it is convenient to control the private and indiscriminate system. Simple seed production enterprises do not need to apply for licenses, but if they want to produce seeds, they must sign entrusting production contracts with enterprises with production and operation licenses. If the seed producer does not have a production and operation license and does not have a power of attorney, it is a private and abusive system. The current seed law has comprehensive hardware requirements for applicants for production licenses, but it does not require strict requirements on the source of the seeds produced. It only requires that "those who apply for a seed production license with the right of new plant varieties shall obtain the written consent of the owner of the variety." Some varieties that do not have the right to breed are easy to be infringed by private reproduction and abuse.

When soliciting opinions on the revised draft of the seed Law, some opinions were also put forward on the "integration of two certificates into one". One is put forward by seed enterprises, thinking that "two certificates are in one" and that it is even more troublesome to apply for a production and operation license in the place where the seed is produced. This is a kind of misreading and did not read the revised draft carefully. Another suggestion is put forward by the seed management agency, which thinks that the lack of a seed production license increases the difficulty of management. This reduces the power of examination and permission for the seed management agencies of key counties and provinces in seed production. The power is small, but the responsibility is still there. We should focus our efforts on market supervision, investigate and deal with private and abusive systems, and crack down on infringement of license plates.

If the revised draft is passed, the China seed Association shall produce and issue a standard sample of seed production power of attorney in a uniform format to facilitate supervision and management.

The management department should be the "watcher" of production safety

In recent years, the seed market order of major crops has been significantly improved, but it is unavoidable that the seed market order of non-major crops, mainly vegetables, is not optimistic. Due to the lack of supervision, the "broken window effect" of tort counterfeiting and lack of integrity is prominent in the field of seed production and management of non-major crops. In production, the accident rate of seed quality of non-major crops is much higher than that of main crops, and because it is cash crops, the loss caused by seed quality accidents of some vegetables is much more serious than that of field crops. What shall I do? The key is to improve laws and regulations to make up for the lack of supervision, the management needs to be a good "watcher".

Therefore, the revision of the seed Law proposes the implementation of registration system for non-major crop varieties, which is not only a major change, but also a bright spot. First, from the point of view of ensuring production safety, protecting innovation and protecting farmers, crops do not matter "primary" or "non-major". Major crop seeds will cause production accidents, as will non-major crop seeds; innovation of major crop varieties needs to be protected, and innovation of non-major crop varieties also needs protection. It is obvious that there are defects in spite of major crop varieties, regardless of non-major crop varieties. Second, from the point of view of variety approval reform, this revision reduces the number of approved crops from 28 to 5, and at the same time implements registration and management of non-major crop varieties, effectively connects them, and opens a green channel for integrated enterprises of breeding, propagation and promotion in the examination and approval of crops, which is a positive and steady promotion of variety approval reform, and the direction of reform is self-evident.

However, the implementation of non-major crop variety registration system will face many difficulties. On the one hand, there are many kinds of non-major crops, so how to determine the registered crop catalogue is a difficult problem. On the other hand, due to the lack of management and protection for many years, non-major crop variety resources are generally shared. Who will register these common variety resources? In promoting the registration work, there are some ideas:

First, highlight the key points and make steady progress. The registered crop varieties should give prominence to the key points and be determined in batches. First, the crop varieties withdrawing from the approved varieties should be listed in the registration catalogue; then the crops with higher production technical requirements and greater seed management risks should be included; in the future, the crop varieties with relatively large production area, close to the life of the masses and obvious competitive advantages in the international arena should be gradually included.

Second, grasp the core and reduce complexity to simplicity. The main purpose of registration is to understand the variety information in order to facilitate market regulation. Adhere to the principle that the applicant is responsible for the filing information, and the registration information should be mainly based on the variety-related information (including DUS) and standard samples provided by the applicant. After registration and acceptance, only rapid DNA testing and comparison of the standard samples are required, and no other audits are added, including the designation of test data provided by third-party institutions to avoid the formation of "class approval" and the intertwining of registration and variety right protection.

Third, build a platform and strengthen services. The relevant functional institutions shall promote the establishment of a platform to provide enterprises with testing services for the resistance and economic traits of non-major crop varieties, and enterprises shall participate voluntarily and operate in a market-oriented manner to solve the problem of insufficient identification and testing capacity of enterprises themselves.

Fourth, link up and down to form a joint force. Registration work covers a wide range of areas, and faced with new problems that have not been encountered before, the cooperation of functional organizations at all levels is very critical, especially the ministry and provincial levels should be seamlessly docked and integrated into a whole in order to promote the registration work to be carried out orderly and effectively.

Cannot be accommodated to the infringement of intellectual property rights

Compared with the current "seed Law," the revised draft "seed Law" has increased the punishment for illegal acts, but it is far from enough, and there is still some accommodation for infringing intellectual property rights and deceiving farmers. The behavior problems under the market economy can only be corrected by the severe punishment of the law, and the law itself is one of the elements of the market economy. Therefore, the key is to use market forces to punish offending enterprises and individuals. In the past, public security organs and judicial organs in various places lacked the basis for law enforcement; the tort cost of "seed industry hooligans" was extremely low, while the social cost of safeguarding their rights was extremely high, and enterprises lost their enthusiasm for safeguarding their rights. This situation can not attract social capital to invest in the seed industry. Therefore, the innovation enthusiasm of all kinds of enterprises and scientific research institutions is declining. This has seriously damaged the independent innovation ability and healthy development of China's seed industry.

The current seed law has only symbolic administrative punishment for tort, the penalty point is too low, the serious tort related to the seed industry is not punished, can not play a deterrent effect, resulting in the tort cost is too low, and the cost of safeguarding the rights of enterprises is too high. Administrative punishment alone is far from protecting intellectual property rights and protecting the enthusiasm of innovation.

It is necessary to adhere to the principle of combining administrative punishment with compensation liability based on commodity economy. The current revised version only provides for administrative penalties, not liability for compensation. It is necessary to combine administrative punishment with liability for compensation in order to play a containment role. Moreover, when the intellectual property rights of enterprises are infringed, the infringer should be required to bear criminal and economic compensation liability, which can deter illegal acts of infringement and encourage and protect the enthusiasm of innovation. In addition, the starting point of administrative punishment should be high, which makes people give up the idea of infringement. Liability includes product research and development costs (breeding costs) + market expected benefits (potential benefits).

Laws to protect intellectual property rights must be operable. The crux of the problem now is that all localities have nothing to rely on in the process of law enforcement, and there is no way to increase the intensity of punishment. Therefore, this time, we should focus on amending the contents of Article 73. The national law on intellectual property and real right does not cover the variety right, so the infringement of the new plant variety right can not be punished. The proposed revision of the "seed Law" strengthens Article 91: "those who violate the criminal law shall be tried in accordance with the criminal law." Then, it is suggested that the Law and work Committee of the National people's Congress should include violations of new variety rights in criminal law, property law and intellectual property protection law when amending the criminal law, intellectual property protection law and property law. In this way, local judicial organs can apply the existing legal provisions to try tort cases in the seed industry.