Now Reading: Supreme Court upholds PepsiCo’s FL 2027 potato registration, protects farmers’ seed rights
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Supreme Court upholds PepsiCo’s FL 2027 potato registration, protects farmers’ seed rights
Supreme Court upholds PepsiCo’s FL 2027 potato registration, protects farmers’ seed rights
The Supreme Court has upheld PepsiCo's registration of the FL 2027 potato variety used in Lay's chips, rejecting a challenge by farmer rights activist Kavitha Kuruganti. However, the bench of Justices J.B.…
The Story in Brief
The Supreme Court has upheld PepsiCo's registration of the FL 2027 potato variety used in Lay's chips, rejecting a challenge by farmer rights activist Kavitha Kuruganti. However, the bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran made it clear that individual farmers retain their rights under section 39(1)(iv) of the PPVFR Act 2001 to save, replant, and sell the seeds or produce among themselves, as long as they do not use the branded name.
The court noted that PepsiCo had earlier sued Gujarat farmers for patent infringement but later said it would not interfere with farmers' legal rights. The ruling keeps the company's exclusive commercial rights intact while shielding small farmers from legal action for traditional agricultural practices.
The Indian Opinion
The Supreme Court has balanced a company's plant variety rights with the farmer's age-old practice of saving and exchanging seeds. Some narratives paint PepsiCo as a corporate bully, but the court did not cancel its registration. Others claim the verdict weakens intellectual property, yet the company's exclusive commercial rights remain intact. The test will be enforcement: will individual farmers genuinely escape harassment, and will PepsiCo refrain from pressuring them for non-branded sales? That is the real question.
Source: bazaar.businesstoday.in
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
