Case T-135/08

Schniga GmbH

v

Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO)

(Plant varieties – Application for a Community plant variety right for the Gala Schnitzer apple variety – Technical examination – Discretion of the CPVO – Objections – Article 55(4) of Regulation (EC) No 2100/94)

Summary of the Judgment

1.      Agriculture – Uniform legislation – Protection of plant varieties – Appeals procedure

(Council Regulation No 2100/94, Art. 73; Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 135(4))

2.      Agriculture – Uniform legislation – Protection of plant varieties – Technical examination

(Council Regulation No 2100/94, Art. 55(4))

1.      The purpose of an action before the General Court is to obtain a review of the legality of decisions of the Boards of Appeal of the Community Plant Variety Office, as provided for in Article 73 of Regulation No 2100/94, on Community plant variety rights, as amended. This must therefore be carried out with regard to the issues of law raised before the Board of Appeal. Therefore, it is not the Court’s function to examine new pleas introduced before it. To allow the examination of those new pleas would be contrary to Article 135(4) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court, according to which the parties’ pleadings may not change the subject-matter of the proceedings before the Board of Appeal.

(see para. 34)

2.      The discretion conferred on the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) by Article 55(4) of Regulation No 2100/94, on Community plant variety rights, includes the right for the CPVO to define, should it deem it necessary, the requirements which it applies to the examination of an application for a Community plant variety right, on condition that the period within which the applicant for such a right must respond to the request in the individual case made to him has not expired.

In that connection, it is consistent with the principle of sound administration and with the need to ensure the proper conduct and effectiveness of proceedings that, when it finds that the lack of precision which it has noted may be corrected, the CPVO has the power to continue with the examination of the application filed with it and is not required, in that situation, to refuse that application. Thus envisaged, that discretion makes it possible to avoid any pointless increase in the period between the filing of an application for a Community plant variety right and the decision on that application which would arise if the applicant were required to file a new application.

In addition, that discretion enables, first, the CPVO to satisfy itself that its requests in individual cases are clear and that the applicant alone is responsible for the fact that its actions fail to comply with those requests and, second, applicants to know their rights and obligations without ambiguity and to take steps accordingly, which is a requirement inherent in the principle of legal certainty.

(see paras 63-65)