agreement and, therefore, was obliged to protect the intellectual property rights in certain plant varieties. The protection as envisaged under the Act is to provide certain exclusive rights for a specified period of time. By virtue of Section 24(6) of the Act, the registration certificate issued in respect of a plant variety could be extended for a period up to 18 years from the date of registration in case of trees and vines and 15 years from the date of registration in other cases. In the case of extant varieties the validity of the registration certificate can be extended upto 15 years from the notification of that variety under Section 5 of the Seeds Act, 1966. In other words, the Parliament in its Legislative wisdom considered that providing exclusivity as specified under Section 24(6) of the Act was sufficient protection to the plant breeders. If the provisions of Section 15(3) of the Act are read in a manner as suggested by the petitioners, the effect would be to extend that period of protection many times over. In the first instance, a breeder would get protection in respect of the hybrid variety and assuming that there are two parent lines, the breeder could just before the expiry of the Registration Certificate in respect of a hybrid variety, register one of the parent variety and thus, extend its period of exclusivity for a further period of 15/18 years because protection of even one parent line would practically ensure exclusive rights in relation to the hybrid variety. In the same manner, before expiry of the registration period of that parent line, the breeder could register the other parent line as a new variety. In this manner a breeder could extend the protection for a period up to maximum 45/54 years instead of 15/18 years as contemplated under the Act. Clearly, this is not the legislative intent of the Parliament.
