Abstract
Given that the need for food, the adaption for climate change and the cure for diseases are emerging challenges in the 21st century, to accelerate breeding new plant varieties to address these challenges is regarded therefore, as the effectives way. The emphasis on plant research and development makes intellectual property right (hereinafter: IPR) protection for plants become a hot issue. Although there are already laws and regulations in place to offer intellectual property protection for new plant varieties, exemptions of IPR left for researchers and farmers are inequitable. Scopes of exemptions either defined by patent or plant variety rights in some major countries in the world serve good references for improving domestic regulation in Taiwan. Historically from the narrowest US system to the fairest European one, they have already impacted on Taiwanese IPR system. In the mean time, when review of the Taiwanese ‘Plant Variety and Seedling Act (PVSA)’ is in process, to deliberate upon a sustainable IPR system is necessary. This thesis proposes to introduce mechanisms such as proportional reward to breeders/farmers of merit for innovative application of research results, discounted royalty payment of preliminary research conducts, and broader exemption for negligence of the third party. By means of the system reform in plant IPR protection, a hopeful environment for plant breeding research and agricultural growing will be expected.