PVPO issues Certificates of Protection for new varieties of plants that are seed reproduced or tuber propagated. A Certificate of Protection is awarded to the owner of a Variety after an examination determines that it is new, distinct from other varieties, and genetically uniform and stable through successive generations and provided that the legal aspects associated with the creation and marketing (if desired by the applicant/customer) are valid.

The owner of a Variety submits an application describing the characteristics of the crop kind or species. The application contains confidential and sensitive information, such as descriptive characteristics of the new Variety or other similar varieties. A complete application includes (1) completed application form signed by the owner; (2) completed exhibits A, B, C, E, F; (3) for a tuber reproduced variety, verification that a viable (in the sense that it will reproduce an entire plant) tissue culture will be deposited and maintained in an approved public repository; and (4) payment by credit card or check drawn on a U.S. bank for $4,382 ($518 filing fee and $3,864 examination fee), payable to "Treasurer of the United States" (See Section 97.6 of the Regulations and Rules of Practice).

NEW: With the application for a seed reproduced variety or by direct deposit soon after filing, the applicant must provide at least 3,000 viable untreated seeds of the variety per se, and for a hybrid variety at least 3,000 untreated seeds of each line necessary to reproduce the variety.

If a certificate is allowed, you will be requested to send a payment by credit card or check payable to "Treasurer of the United States" in the amount of $768 for issuance of the certificate. Certificates will be issued to owner, not licensee or agent. See below for a listing of the required information.

A variety may be considered new only if propagating or harvested material of the variety has not been sold or otherwise disposed of to other persons for purposes of exploitation of the variety for more than 1 year in the U.S. or 4 years outside of the U.S.

Additionally, the PVP Office maintains databases for crops of both public and private varieties. The examiner uses those and other sources to determine which, if any, varieties are indistinguishable from the new one. If the examiner finds varieties that appear to be indistinguishable from the application variety, the applicant will be notified that supplemental data are necessary. To obtain additional data, applicants may perform additional field or greenhouse replications and may use DNA profiling other analyses to substantiate distinctness. The USDA does not perform tests to confirm distinctness of a variety. That responsibility rests with the applicant.