EMERGENT GENETICS INDIA PVT LTD Vs. SHAILENDRA SHIVAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Plaintiff, is a private limited company is a Joint Venture between Hindustan Lever Ltd and Emergent Genetics LLC. It is engaged in research, development, processing and sale of seeds in India. The second Defendant - Pradham Biotech Pvt. Ltd. is an incorporated Indian company; the first, third and fourth Defendants are the Plaintiff?s former employees. The fifth Defendant is the Chief Executive of Seeds India, a partnership firm which processes and packages seeds, which also used to process seeds for the Plaintiff between 13th Nov. 2001 and 17th Oct. 2003. The present order will dispose of two applications one by the Plaintiff, seeking temporary injunction, and the other, by the Defendant, seeking rejection of the plaint.2

(2.) The suit alleges that till March 2003, the first Defendant was the Plaintiff?s National Sales Co-ordinator; as on the date of filing the suit, he was director of the second Defendant and in-charge of decision-making in key areas. Till January 2003, the third Defendant used to be in charge of the Plaintiff?s sales, production and processing; as on the date of filing the suit, he was principal share holder and CEO, as well as Managing Director of the sixth Defendant. Similarly, till January 2003, the fourth Defendant used to be in charge of the Plaintiff?s research and production of vegetables; as on the date of filing the suit, he was principal officer and shareholder of the second Defendant and also part of its decisionmaking process. The fifth Defendant was a shareholder of the second Defendant.

(3.) The Plaintiff contends that there are two types of seeds as per provisions of the Seeds Act, 1966 i.e. notified under Section 5 and non-notified . Notified seeds can be sold by anyone upon procuring a license to sell from the Appropriate Authority; these are termed public varieties . The other varieties are called research varieties for which separate licenses are required. An applicant for this type of seed has to demonstrate proof of research history to obtain the license. The Plaintiff contends that there are six distinct steps involved in development of research varieties, i.e. (1): Collection of Germplasm. (2) Characterization and selection of desired traits in the plant; (3) Creation of Hybrid Seed; (4) Evaluation of the new hybrid plant and multiplication of the parent seed (hereafter called foundation seed); (5) Production of hybrid seeds by contract farmers and (6) Processing hybrid seeds for the market. It is submitted that the nomenclature F-1 denotes the first generation seed produced from the Foundation seed; the second generation seed produced from the F-1 seed is called the F-2 seed, and so on.