The US extension of plant variety protection: a critical evaluation

This article examines recent US initiatives to extend plant variety protection, specifically the passage of the 1994 amendments to the Plant Varieties Protection Act and the subsequent US accession to the 1991 International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties. The US passage of extended coverage for plant varieties can only properly be understood within an historical and a global context. Within this context the extended coverage proves problematic on a number of counts.