Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970

Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970
Long title	An act to encourage the development of novel varieties of sexually reproduced plants and to make them available to the public, providing protection available to those who breed, develop, or discover them, and thereby promoting progress in agriculture in the public interest.
Acronyms (colloquial)	PVPA
Enacted by	the 91st United States Congress
Effective	December 24, 1970
Citations
Public law	Pub. L. 91–577
Codification
U.S.C. sections created	7 U.S.C. §§ 2321–2582
Legislative history
	Introduced in the United States Senate as S. 3070 by Walter Mondale D‑MN on October 23, 1969; Committee consideration by Agriculture and Forestry, Judiciary, Agriculture; Passed the Senate on October 2, 1970 ; Passed the House on December 8, 1970 ;

The Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 (PVPA), 7 U.S.C. §§ 2321-2582, is an intellectual property statute in the United States. The PVPA gives breeders up to 25 years of exclusive control over new, distinct, uniform, and stable sexually reproduced or tuber-propagated plant varieties. A major expression of plant breeders' rights in the United States, the PVPA grants protection similar to that available through patents, but these legal schemes differ in critical respects. The PVPA should not be confused with plant patents, which are limited to asexually reproduced plants (not including tuber-propagated plants).