During this year's food security Publicity Week in China, from October 16 to 18, the Supreme People's Court issued five recent cases of judicial protection of intellectual property rights in seed industry concluded by the Supreme Law Intellectual Property Court (hereinafter referred to as the Court), creating a good legal environment for the revitalization of seed industry and guiding the effective protection of rights of variety owners.

　　The court recently made final judgments on two appeals cases of infringement of new plant variety rights, both of which involved authorized varieties of asexual reproduction. There are differences between the two cases in fulfilling the burden of proof diligently and diligently, which leads to the different results of the case judgment. In the "Hongyunlai" pineapple variety infringement case, the standard sample of the authorized variety was kept in the new plant variety testing (Shanghai) sub-center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Areas, and the variety owner did his duty of diligent proof to the alleged infringing sample to be tested, which ensured that the alleged infringing seedlings had good activity, thus proving that the alleged infringing seedlings belonged to the authorized variety "Hongyunlai". Finally, he won the second instance and received a high compensation of 1.075 million yuan for economic losses and reasonable expenses for safeguarding rights. In the case of "Lucinda" potato variety infringement, the variety owner failed to fulfill the obligation of diligent proof, failed to prove or fully explain that the propagation materials provided to the testing institution belonged to the propagation materials of the authorized variety, and the basis for his claim that the alleged infringing potato seeds were identical with the authorized variety "Lucinda" potatoes he requested to protect was insufficient, so the second instance changed the judgment and rejected the claim. The two cases are of positive significance for guiding the variety owners to effectively safeguard their rights.

　　In the case of disputes over infringement of technical secrets of breeding materials, because breeding materials are usually not sold publicly in the market and lack of market prices that can be directly referred to, it is difficult to calculate the actual losses or benefits obtained from infringement through their selling prices, and the calculation of damages for infringement has become a difficult point in the trial. In this batch of technical secret infringement cases involving maize inbred parents, in view of the specific amount of compensation that the infringer should bear for infringing the technical secrets of the parents, the court ruled in the second instance that the competitive advantages of the parents, such as breeding costs, characteristics, and their substitutability, and the contribution rate to the market benefits of the bred hybrids, can be taken into account. For the parents of maize hybrids, their contribution rate to the market benefits of the bred hybrids can refer to the relevant practices of the industry on the distribution of the benefits of maize breeding achievements in the transaction of variety management rights, and consider the circumstances of infringement to appropriately increase the proportion of the benefits of protected varieties. This judgment has made a useful exploration on the calculation of damages for infringement of technical secrets of crop breeding materials lacking market selling price.

　　In the case of "Lihe 228" maize plant new variety infringement, the second instance judgment of the court held that the fact that the criminal defendant sold the infringing seeds without a license, which was determined by the previous criminal judgment involving seeds, could be regarded as the fact that the obligee did not need to prove in the civil infringement case; At the same time, according to Mr. Zhang's civil judgment and the announcement of Heilongjiang Crop Variety Approval Committee, it can be concluded that the alleged infringing variety "Hayu 189" and the authorized variety "Lihe 228" are actually the same variety. The above identification effectively reduces the difficulty of safeguarding the rights of the obligee according to law, realizes the organic connection of "punishment", "action" and "people", and implements the whole chain protection and coordinated protection of the right to new plant varieties.

　　[Editor in charge: Song Anyong]