The Delhi High Court last week upheld an order by the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority (PPVFRA), revoking the intellectual property protection granted to PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd with respect to a potato variety developed by it.
What is the case about?
It pertains to FL 2027, a potato variety with high dry matter and low sugar content better suited for making chips. Normal table potatoes have more moisture, which adds to dehydration and energy costs during processing, and higher sugar, which causes blackening on frying.
FL 2027 was developed in 1996 by Robert W Hoopes, a US breeder employed with Frito-Lay Agricultural Research, a division of PepsiCo Inc. The latter has been manufacturing potato chips sold under its Lay’s brand using this processing-grade variety, which is grown by some 14,000 farmers in India via contract cultivation and buy-back at pre-fixed rates.
PepsiCo India Holdings, the subsidiary of the US food, snack and beverage giant, was granted a certificate of registration for FL 2027 as an “extant variety” on February 1, 2016. The validity period – during which nobody else could commercially produce, sell, market, distribute, import or export it without the breeder’s authorisation – was six years from the date of registration and extendable up to 15 years.