T&G Global celebrates the recent Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China’s judgment upholding a landmark decision concerning the protection of Scilate apple plant variety rights.
This judgement affirms the decision made by Lanzhou Intermediate Court of Gansu Province in November 2023, where the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in T&G’s intellectual property rights case against a defendant who cultivated and commercially sold Scilate variety plant material and apples derived from illegally planted materials. The Court ordered T&G to cut out the illegal material and awarded punitive damages of RMB 3.3 million.
T&G Global Chief Executive Gareth Edgecombe stated that this is a landmark case regarding the protection of intellectual property rights case in China and will positively impact breeders, growers, consumers, customers, and horticulture industry.
“This significant ruling by the Supreme People’s Court show’s China’s strong commitment under its newly strengthened Seed Law to safeguard plant variety rights and put a stop to illegitimate production and infringement. It lays a solid legal foundation for our future enforcement actions,” stated Mr. Edgecombe.
“In China, Joy Wing Mau is permitted to commercially grow and sell Scilate apples as our premium ENVY® apple brand within the country. Now, with this judgement, Chinese consumers can be assured that they are buying genuine locally grown ENVY® apples. It will also help to develop and grow the country’s horticulture industry through the licensing of high value varieties and modern growing systems.”
“Plant variety creation requires years of investment in research and development and extensive sales and marketing efforts, which, in our case, is supported by the ruling from China’s highest Court. This decision, in our opinion, strengthens the belief for horticultural businesses like ours that want to invest in China knowing that their intellectual property is secure.”
“For T&G and our premium brands, China is a strategically important and expanding market. We are willing to commit to develop new proprietary varieties of plants that aid Chinese growers, consumers, and customers, and help advance the country’s agriculture.”
“We have, together with our variety management subsidiary Venture Fruit Global, a considerable pipeline of new apple, pear and berry varieties that we want to license and cultivate in China. “We hope that with this favorable decision we will be able to meet our further development targets,” says Mr. Edgecombe.
The Group possesses a plant variety T&G and trademarks specific to T&G with which Venture Fruit actively protects, and thus serves as the spearhead on all plant protection matters regarding T&G. Subsequently, Venture Fruit has the responsibility of actively seeking enforcement of relevant laws that would aid in curbing planting, propagation, counterfeiting, and trademark infringement of T&G’s intellectual assets, and as such Venture Fruit has committed itself to simultaneously work with the relevant authorities in China to actively combat such violations and enforcement breaches and protect the business interests of its licensees.
The determination made by the Supreme People’s Court will prevent infringement of the assets in question for the foreseeable future. It is regarded as a legitimate conclusive decision to be executed against the alleged infringer.
The ruling states the infringer must avoid all reproduction and exploitation of the proprietary rights exercised by T&G on the intangible assets in question through removing the obfuscated illegal propagated material of the living organism. They ruled that the claim for infringement extends to Scilate fruit post-harvested material also, less the recently passed Seed Law in the People’s Republic of China.
Following the settling of the appeal, T&G is now in a position to initiate a new claim with the aim of additional compensatory damages for the defense of rights infringement subsequent to the ruling done in the first 2023 ruling.
