The General Court of the European Union has ratified the protection of the Nadorcott mandarin variety, owned by the King of Morocco since 2004, as the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rejected the appeal filed by the Eurosemillas company, which requested the nullity of said protection.
The ruling issued on Wednesday rejects the arguments of Eurosemillas, which criticized the Community Plant Variety Office's lack of ex officio investigation. It should be noted that the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) had already dismissed an earlier appeal by Eurosemillas in 2020 after considering that it was "unfounded".
Eurosemillas argued that the Nadorcott variety did not meet the novelty requirement, claiming that, before the end of the grace period, there had been transfers of components and harvested material of this variety for exploitation purposes outside and inside the EU. However, the General Court of the European Union noted that the deliveries and transfers mentioned by Eurosemillas were purely experimental and that the plantings in dispute took place during the grace period, which does not affect the novelty of the Nadorcott variety.
In addition, Eurosemillas maintained that the application for protection of the Nadorcott variety wasn't valid because it contained inaccurate information, arguing that this should prevent the allocation of a filing date that would benefit the extension of the grace period in the EU. However, the General Court has determined that the CPVO correctly concluded that the request for protection was valid.
Source: europapress.es