On September 30, 2024, the Constitutional Court accepted the extraordinary action for protection filed by the National Service of Intellectual Property Rights (hereinafter SENADI) against decisions of indigenous justice and declared to leave without legal effect the Indigenous Jurisdictional Act N\u00b0 003-CPKA-2020, issued by the Confederation of the Kayambi Community. This Act contained 28 resolutions related to the floriculture sector that exceeded the scope of competence of the Kayambi Community and changed of the Ecuadorian legislation, mainly in the area of intellectual property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Had the resolution remained in force and become enforceable, it would have undermined the legal protection framework for plant breeders, rendering it obsolete and jeopardizing their right to legal certainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the extraordinary action for protection filed by SENADI, this institution argued that its constitutional rights were violated by the Kayambi Community\u2019s decision 003-CPKA-2020. Specifically, the rights alleged to have been violated were the right to legal certainty, to defense and to due process, since the decision aimed, among other things, to regulate how much should be paid in royalties for plant varieties, to prohibit the restriction of floral exports by community producers and associations of the Kayambi People (even in cases of intellectual property infringement), and to reform SENADI\u2019s administrative resolutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tobar ZVS represented Plantec, a company directly affected by the Kayambi People\u2019s resolution, as it is the commercial representative of several plant breeders. Some arguments made in their amicus curiae<\/em> brief and others submitted by Tobar ZVS during the proceedings were that the indigenous justice decision is incompatible with Andean Decision 345, which regulates the protection of Breeders\u2019 Rights of Plant Varieties, and with the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). Additionally, while it is important for indigenous justice resolutions to align with the rights recognized in the Constitution, it is crucial to verify whether such resolutions were issued within the framework of an internal conflict within the indigenous community, which is essential for their legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, the Court decided that there was no internal conflict. The Kayambi Community\u2019s resolution referred to a supposed conflict arising from an administrative resolution issued by SENADI within a proceeding initiated by the company Plantec. However, neither SENADI nor Plantec are members of the community, and the Kayambi People failed to demonstrate how their actions affected their community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ruling determined that SENADI\u2019s actions, within the administrative process, as the competent authority on Intellectual Rights, did not disrupt the harmony and peace of the Kayambi Community. In fact, it was confirmed that SENADI acted within its authority and exercised the oversight it is responsible for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this reason, the Constitutional Court, through Ruling No. 4-20-EI\/24, concluded that the resolution No. 003-CPKA-2020 of February 29th<\/sup>, 2020, exceeded the jurisdictional scope of the Confederation of the Kayambi Community because it went beyond the terms established in Article 171 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador and constitutional jurisprudence. The resolution concerns a contractual dispute over intellectual property and not an internal conflict within the indigenous community. The purpose of the Kayambi People\u2019s resolution was to pay only what they deemed appropriate for the intellectual property of plant breeders and to evade SENADI\u2019s oversight faculties, clearly not seeking to resolve an internal conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This ruling was approved by five of the nine judges of the Constitutional Court. The dissenting opinion issued by the remaining four judges argued that the ruling increases the control of the State and ordinary justice over indigenous justice, which they find incompatible with the principle of interculturality. They state that the Court should have conducted a substantive analysis of the grounds of the decision before determining whether there was in fact an internal conflict, and that the legitimacy of SENADI to file the action was not sufficiently justified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On September 30, 2024, the Constitutional Court accepted the extraordinary action for protection filed by the National Service of Intellectual Property Rights (hereinafter SENADI) against decisions of indigenous justice and declared to leave without legal effect the Indigenous Jurisdictional Act N\u00b0 003-CPKA-2020, issued by the Confederation of the Kayambi Community. This Act contained 28 resolutions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"iawp_total_views":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,29],"tags":[34,30],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dispute-resolution","category-labor-consulting","tag-article","tag-boletin-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n