Information;Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2021:441
Date: 2021-07-14
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Fifth Chamber
Subject matter: Intellectual, industrial and commercial property;Plant varieties
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded
Origin: Italy

summary of those pleas in law. Those details must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable the defendant to prepare its defence and the Court to rule on the action, if necessary without any other information. In order to guarantee legal certainty and the sound administration of justice it is necessary, if an action is to be admissible, for the basic legal and factual particulars relied upon to be stated coherently and intelligibly in the application itself. The application must, accordingly, specify the nature of the grounds on which it is based, with the result that a mere abstract statement of the grounds does not satisfy the requirements of the Rules of Procedure (see, to that effect, judgment of 25 March 2015, Belgium v Commission, T‑538/11, EU:T:2015:188, paragraphs 131 and 132 and the case-law cited). 60 It should be pointed out that the applicant has provided no further details as to the alleged infringement of the obligation to state reasons. Accordingly, it is not possible, having regard to the application, to ascertain to what extent the applicant’s ability to protect its interests was compromised by the Board of Appeal’s alleged failure to take account of such facts or scientific evidence, or even the nature of those facts or scientific evidence. 61 Furthermore, in so far as this plea concerns the first part of the first plea, relating to the alleged failure to use starch regression in determining the time for harvest, and specifically the reliance on the extract from the book Postharvest Technology of Horticultural Crops (3rd Edition, 2002), which was a contribution by Michael S. Reid, headed ‘Maturation and Maturity Indices’, emphasising the importance and reliability of measuring starch regression when determining the ripeness of apples, it is clear that the statement of reasons provided by the Board of Appeal in that regard satisfies the conditions laid down by case-law. 62 The obligation to state reasons laid down in Article 75 of the basic regulation has the same scope as that which derives from the second paragraph of Article 296 TFEU which requires that the statement of reasons must disclose in a clear and unequivocal manner the reasoning followed by the institution which adopted the measure in question, without it being necessary for that reasoning to go into all the relevant facts and points of law, since the question whether the statement of reasons meets those requirements must, nonetheless, be assessed with regard, not only to its wording, but also to its context and to all the legal rules governing the matter in question (see, by analogy, judgment of 28 June 2018, EUIPO v Puma, C‑564/16 P, EU:C:2018:509, paragraph 65 and the case-law cited). 63 It is clear from the applicant’s arguments and from the Court’s assessment in paragraphs 20 to 27 above that the statement of reasons for the contested decision in that regard provided the applicant with sufficient information to ascertain whether the measure was well founded or whether it was vitiated by a defect enabling its validity to be challenged before the Courts of the European Union and to enable those courts to review the legality of that measure. 64 In the light of all the foregoing considerations, the fourth plea must be rejected and, consequently, the action must be dismissed in its entirety. Costs 65 Under Article 134(1) of the Rules of Procedure, the unsuccessful party is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the successful party’s pleadings. 66 Since the applicant has been unsuccessful, it must be ordered to pay the costs, in accordance with the form of order sought by the CPVO. On those grounds, THE GENERAL COURT (Fifth Chamber) hereby: 1. Dismisses the action; 2. Orders Griba Baumschulgenossenschaft landwirtschaftliche Gesellschaft to pay the costs. Spielmann Öberg Mastroianni Delivered in open court in Luxembourg on 14 July 2021. E. Coulon S. Papasavvas Registrar President * Language of the case: English.