Tokyo, July 17 (Jiji Press)--Japan's parliament on Friday enacted a bill to prevent the unauthorized sales of domestically developed agricultural products overseas. Aiming to better protect the rights related to Japan-developed fruits that are popular overseas and prevent a loss of profit, the bill to revise the plant variety protection and seed law was approved at a plenary meeting of the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet. The revision will enable agricultural product developers to demand an injunction against unauthorized exports, even before they acquire the so-called breeder rights, which grant developers the exclusive right to sell new crop varieties by registering them with the government. The screening for such a registration takes three to six years, and newly developed fruits and other crops were often sold overseas during such periods, posing a problem to developers. Through the revision, the duration of breeder rights will be extended by 10 years, reaching 40 years for fruit trees and 35 years for other crops. According to an estimate by the agriculture ministry, the Shine Muscat grapes sold overseas caused losses of almost 20 billion yen a year in royalties, which should be paid to the developers, alone. The ministry also plans to launch by the end of next month an organization to protect and utilize breeder rights. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]