In july 2024, a 12-day-old planting site, zhang zhang said that the blueberry branch had been "silently found" and had been awarded $144,000 by the supreme court. A friend of the balcony who wanted to plant blueberries noticed that the water was much deeper than most people thought, and that the wrong-sourced whole planting package had to be pushed back。
I'll pay $140,000 for stealing a seed
On 18 july 2024, business registration was completed at a plantation site, which was released in the circle of friends only 12 days laterBlueberry seedlingsThe sale of information was followed in september by a continuous flow of shivering accounts. A spanish plant company, inc., which holds the right to new plant varieties of the "pulabrook 1542" blueberry variety, and an agricultural company of its chinese licensee, after detecting it, arranged for persons to travel to the base by means of notarized evidence and purchased and took away the objects against the blueberry seed。
The results of the forensic comparison confirmed that blueberry seedlings sold at the plantation site were very similar to, or even similar to, the "pulabrook 1542". At the time, the base had a total of 120,000 seedlings, with 20,000 of the varieties complained of and half of all seedlings in another blueberries. The first instance court of kunming found that the facts of the violation were clear, and awarded damages of $144,000, plus a reasonable fee of $10,000, totalling $154,000。
The base was exposed to the theft of a branch
At the notary evidence site, salesmen from the plantation site were accused of using the covert phrase "spain 42" and voluntarily referred to the breeding process. He claimed that the branch of "42" had been taken from a company that had organized groups of licensed parties, and that it had been said that it had produced breeding materials without formal authorization and in private relations, a statement that was directly motivated by the violation。
More critically, the planting grounds did not indicate the legal origin of the other half of the species, nor did they produce a procurement contract or certificate of ownership. In accordance with the rules of evidence, the court concluded, without reasonable explanation, that the species was similarly unauthorized. More than 67 percentage points of 120,000 seedlings are infrequent seedlings, none of which is clean and clean。
How do you find it
The supreme court, in second instance, divided "violation-based" into three elements to determine: time, starting with illegally acquired reproductive material from the very beginning of the establishment of the plant, rather than as an occasional criminal in business; the proportion of unauthorized varieties that account for the majority of the total production; and subjectively, production, reproduction, sale and promise of sale, knowing that they are not licensed. The three conditions are superimposed and the whole business model is based on tort。
Before the supreme law refined this standard, the local courts' perception of "violation" varied widely, with some conservative bias. There is now a uniform standard of adjudication: violations committed since their establishment, combined with the majority of violations, can be considered to be both satisfied. The rejection of the plantation appeal showed that the sentencing logic of the first instance was sound and did not unduly extend the punishment。
Punitive damagesHow
The kunming central court first accounted for the base amount in accordance with the statutory compensation framework, and finally awarded $144,000 in economic losses plus $10,000 in defence expenses because the punitive compensation clause was triggered by "violation of business". For a small base that was established less than four months ago, the main camp was a seedling sales base, the compensation was almost a one-off clean-up of all stocks and liquidity, and it was largely impossible to plant any more。
Punitive damages are not counted as a zero at the discretion of the courts. It needs to satisfy both the subjective intent of the violator and the gravity of the violation. In this case, the cultivation base, knowing that it was not authorized, voluntarily gave the origin of the theft, and most of the violations took place, with all three elements being put in place. The supreme law upholds the sentence by drawing lines for similar cases, with the source of a violation significantly greater than the end retail。
Blueberries on the balcony. Three bottoms. Line
The home balcony grows blueberries, and the source of seedlings is more important than soil formulations and fertilizer-seeking programmes. The first line: don't buy the circle of friends, the ill-defined "poaching seedlings" in the short video, the quality of seedlings without permission to breed is not guaranteed and the legal risks are high. Second bottom line: priority is given to sellers who can present a licence to breed or a formal entry channel, and it is advisable that a test report be attached to a group of bottled seedlings to identify and promote uniformity in the variety of products。
Third line: don't buy "multiple packages" cheaply. In the present case, half of the planting base was another species of unknown origin, and the court directly presumed the violation. You grow three or five trees on the balcony so that the defendant does not go to court, but the seedlings that you buy for dozens of dollars are likely to be very different from the original ones, with all the discounts on the duration, sweetness, cold tolerance, and possibly white for a whole year, with no money。
Protection of the same rights of middle and foreign breeders
This case has an easy to ignore: the plant rights holders are spanish companies, but in china the actual defenders are licensed domestic agricultural enterprises. In its circular, the supreme law specifically refers to the phrase "innovative outcomes of equal protection of foreign breeders", which clearly means that, regardless of the country from which the species are introduced, the legal protection in china is as strong as that of imported varieties, without discounting them。
On the other hand, it has neither been authorized by the licensee nor applied for breed rights or registered on its own, relying on "relationship". On world food day, the supreme law focused on the typical case of the protection of new varieties of plants, with one core signal: planting is at the top of the chain of abuse, and here it is the toughest. For domestic breeders, the access to rights has become truly accessible。
Have you ever planted blueberries on a balcony or a yard? Did you get it from a regular nursery or online? The comment section is welcome to share your experience, and if it is useful, it can be forwarded to a friend who also wants to grow blueberries。
