b'EASING ACCESS TO PATENTED TRAITS FOR FURTHER BREEDINGAN INITIATIVE DESIGNED TO SECURE EUROPES PLANT BREEDING INNOVATION.BY: MARCEL BRUINSG etting access to commercial varieties for breeding purposesWe believe that this platform has the potential to bene-and to marketed patented traits can be burdensome. Afit European society by ensuring that innovations bringing recently announced project might bring some relief. Europeanimprovements in agricultural crop productivity and sustaina-Seedsat down with the steering group behind the Agriculturalbility, can be available to all European breeders.Crop Licensing Platform initiative. The geographical scope of the ACLP is Europe (specifi-cally. the 38 Member States of the European Patent Convention, EUROPEAN SEED (ES): CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT ISUkraine and Russia).THE BACKGROUND OF THE AGRICULTURAL CROP LICENSING PLATFORM ACLP INITIATIVE, AND WHATES: YOUR EXPLANATION IMPLIES THAT THE CURRENT ARE YOU AIMING TO ACHIEVE? OPTIONS FOR TRAIT ACCESS IN EUROPE ARE LIMITED AGRICULTURAL CROP LICENSING PLATFORM (ACLP):TheOR VERY COMPLEX, IS THAT THE CASE?initiative is currently driven by 10 European plant breedingACLP:Indeed. The situation is two-fold. It all starts with access-companies and trait developers representing a wide range ofing commercially available varieties for breeding purposes which agricultural crops and includes small, medium-sized and bigis generally permitted under Plant Variety Protection. However, companies. They are jointly working together on the establish- if a patented trait is contained in a commercial variety, patent ment of a simple legal framework enabling access to commerciallaws in most European countries are seen to undermine this varieties for breeding purposes and providing access to mar- access since they do not provide for a statutory limited breeders keted patented traits on fair conditions in Europe with increasedexemption. Besides, it is unclear whether the trait owner would transparency, including eventually, genome edited traits. Withgrant a license to the trait for commercial purposes, and if so, this, the ACLP intends to be a collaborative source for plantunder what conditions. This means that access to specific traits breeding innovations. can be a highly complex, time-consuming process, and can come 40IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM'