Globalization: Future challenges for the plant and seed industry-International Conference Amsterdam April 2008

Global agricultural markets are undergoing unprecedented growth, triggered by a sharp rise in commodity prices over the past 1-2 years due to the increasing demand for agricultural products for food, feed, and biofuels. Recent publications, predict that this structural change in demand will keep commodity prices high for the foreseeable future. The consequence is a major challenge and opportunity for the plant and seed industry in both established and emerging markets such as Latin America, and Asia, which can only be met by continuously increasing innovation. This innovation is brought to market in form of seeds and plant varieties, which can be easily propagated and therefore require effective intellectual property protection regimes to encourage innovation and protect the legitimate interests of breeders and inventors. However, the intellectual property protection for plants and breeding processes is highly heterogeneous and uneven from a global perspective and is further challenged by NGOs, legislators, but also from within the seed industry. The globalization also results in increase of counterfeiting activities especially in the ornamental and fruit tree sector. Deficiencies of current protection systems become apparent especially in the enforcement area. These developments are a challenge for each seed company to develop protection strategies, but also for the seed industry as such to build alliances for an improved protection regime.
The "3rd International Conference on IP Protection for Plant Innovation" on April 17th and 18th in Amsterdam, NL, will give an overview of the available protection mechanisms, their strength and weaknesses, recent developments, and the upcoming challenges of the future.

FORUM Institut für Management GmbH
Vangerowstraße 18
69115 Heidelberg

Contact/Press:
Ulf Berghaus
Tel: 06221 - 500 630
Mail: u.berghaus@forum-institut.de

The FORUM Institut für Management GmbH was founded in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1979 and is part of the Springer Science+ Business Media publishing group. As one of the leading conference and seminar specialists in Europe, we are dedicated to providing high-quality training to professionals and executives. In 2006, more than 20,000 executives from countries around the world attended FORUM conferences and seminars. FORUM Institut has expanded internationally – organizing events in Alicante, Brussels, Geneva, Helsinki, Tokyo, London, Milan, Paris, The Hague, Prague, Istanbul, Vienna, Warsaw and Zurich.

This release was published on openPR.