Plant rights database now online; "How old are you now?"

Yet more information is now available online for IP lawyers, this time for members of the plant varieties fraternity. The IPKat has learned, thanks to his friend Philippe de Jong (Altius), that the (European) Community Plant Variety Office is now making available a database of plant variety rights case law is now (finally) online. Click here to test it out. According to the CPVO website,

"This database is a service provided by the CPVO in order to facilitate access to case law from EU States and deciding bodies on Plant Variety Right issues. It consists of a compilation of cases combined with a search tool.

The database provides summaries of case law exclusively in English. It also provides the full text judgments in their original language. Please note that the documents supplied are not the official version of the decisions taken by jurisdictions within the EU. If you wish to have access to the official text, please directly consult the organism which officially took the decision concerned. You may use the data for personal use. For any other use, please contact the CPVO.

The CPVO does its most to provide data of the highest quality possible

The database is a living system which is not yet complete. Data will regularly be added".

The IPKat is really impressed by the description of the database as a living system, since it is the product of constant evoluation and gentle, incremental growth. Merpel adds, the search tool works pretty efficiently but it's designed for knowledgeable search rather than casual browsing - so you can't just browse the names of litigants.


The observant Ross Manning (Imperial College) has spotted this item on a topic that the IPKat has hitherto given little thought to: the precise age of World Intellectual Property Organisation director-General Kamil Idris. The report seems to have been picked up initially by Intellectual Property Watch. Reputedly Dr Idris, who has headed WIPO since 1997, has been giving his birthdate as 1945, though he was really born in 1954. The IPKat finds it puzzling that a discrepancy of nearly a decade can have gone unnoticed for so long in the case of an appointment with such a high public profile. Co-blogger Jeremy considers it remarkable that, having entered the IP field in 1973, his involvement has coincided with the reign of just two WIPO Directors-General: Idris himself since 1997 and Arpad Bogsch from 1973 to 1997.