The Canadian government has settled its lawsuit against Monson Fruit Co. of Washington state over the alleged infringement of a cherry-variety patent, shortly before a trial that was due to open on 14 September in the US District Court for Eastern Washington in Spokane. The judge has agreed to dismiss the case.

Under the settlement, Monson must pay past and future royalties on Staccato trees and is barred from propagating new trees through 2029 and from exporting the cherries through 2032, according to Summerland Varieties Corp., which is licensed to commercialise the variety.

The complaint, filed six years ago against Monson and two other defendants near Wenatchee, alleged that grower Gordon Goodwin patented a new variety, Glory, after finding a tree delivered by Van Well Nursery growing differently from the rest of his orchard — when the tree was in fact a Staccato, a cultivar developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and supplied to the nursery for testing. Goodwin and the nursery, the complaint said, enlisted Monson to propagate and plant the trees in breach of the Canadian patent.

The defendants won at first: in 2022 a federal judge held that the patent had been voided by commercial sales of the variety before Canada applied for protection. He later reversed himself after doubting the evidence of those early sales, restored the patent, and found Staccato genetically indistinguishable from Glory — the small differences the defendants cited being ordinary variation between individual trees. The Staccato tree, he concluded, had probably been delivered to Goodwin by accident in a shipment of other trees and mistaken for a natural mutation.

Goodwin and Van Well Nursery settled last year, agreeing to destroy unauthorised Staccato trees and to assign the Glory patent to the Canadian government, Summerland Varieties said, leaving Monson as the last defendant.

Source: Capital Press