Events

Date: 15 June 2022
Time:  13:00 – 17:30
Location: Orion, Wageningen and via Zoom
Organizer: EPS & GeneSprout
Registration: open
Deadline: 10 June 2022
Credits: 0.15

Plants and patents breeders’ rights are increasingly emerging as critical topics in the dialogue about the future of agriculture in Europe. They encompass not only the plant breeding industry, but regard also very closely plant science research, plant science entrepreneurship and academic corporate value creation, as well as farmers’ rights.

Recently, intellectual property (IP) rights have moved at the heart of the discussion on the acceptance of New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), like CRISPR-Cas9, in the EU. During the Opening of the Academic Year 2021-2022, Wageningen University announced that their CRISPR-Cas9 patents would be available free of charge for non-profit applications in plants. The future of NGTs in Europe, which is currently at the top of the European Commission agenda, will also depend on the outcome of the dialogue on IP rights.

This is why GeneSprout Initiative, the European initiative of young plant scientists for an open dialogue on NGTs, and the graduate school of Experimental Plant Sciences are hosting the hybrid “Plants & Patents” symposium on June 15th from 13.00 to 17.30. Speakers will include IP experts, industry professionals, institutions, academia, farmers, patent portfolio managers, entrepreneurs and young plant scientists. The end goal is to allow young plant scientists to develop an informed opinion on intellectual property in the plant science domain, and to stimulate critical thinking.