Agrochemicals and Agriculture
In agrochemicals and seed production, intellectual property is a key tool for protecting the results of long-term research and breeding work. Rights to new plant varieties and patents for crop protection products grant right holders exclusive commercial use of their innovations.
The Ukrainian agricultural market is defined by active interaction between original-product developers, local seed producers, and generic manufacturers. Core legal risks include unauthorized seed multiplication, patent infringement during crop protection production, and circulation of counterfeit products.
ADVANCE PARTNERS provides dedicated legal support to seed companies, breeders, and agrochemical producers in acquisition, commercialization, and enforcement of IP rights across the full range of agricultural innovations.
Our services
- Plant variety protection: legal support for registration of rights to plant varieties, obtaining patents and certificates, and filing with national IP and state registries.
- Patenting in agriculture: preparing applications for inventions and utility models in agrochemicals, biotechnology solutions, and breeding.
- State registration of crop protection products and fertilizers: legal support for trials and registration procedures required for import, production, and use in Ukraine.
- IP agreements and licensing: drafting seed multiplication agreements, plant variety and technology license agreements, and material transfer agreements (MTA).
- Trademark protection: registering trademarks for seed brands, crop protection lines, fertilizers, and agri-tech platforms.
- Customs protection and anti-counterfeit actions: entering patents and trademarks in the customs register to stop imports of counterfeit products and unauthorized seed material.
Core industry expertise
We focus on matters that require specialized legal expertise in the agricultural sector:
- Breeders' rights protection: representation in disputes over unauthorized multiplication, cultivation, and sale of protected varieties.
- Generic competition response: enforcement of patent rights against generic crop protection producers and advisory on regulatory data protection.
- Freedom-to-operate (FTO): patent landscape analysis before launch of new agrochemical products or technologies.
- Trade secret protection: implementing trade secret regimes for breeding methods, germplasm data, and trial results.
- Essentially derived varieties (EDV): advisory on EDV legal regime under Ukrainian plant variety legislation and UPOV standards.