Miami-based Del Monte Fresh Produce NA has failed in its bid to prevent market rival, Dole Fresh Fruit, from marketing an extra-sweet Premium Select pineapple.
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Del Monte first sued Dole Fresh Fruit, a California-based subsidiary of Dole Foods, in March 2000 saying that the Premium Select pineapple was a copy of Del Monte’s own Del Monte Gold fruit.
A complaint sought a “worldwide injunction enjoining Dole from advertising, promoting and misrepresenting MD-2 variety pineapples as resulting from its own development efforts and requiring Dole to place corrective advertisements indicating the true source of those pineapples”.
US Magistrate Judge Andrea Simonton has now ruled however that Del Monte’s letters to Costa Rican pineapple growers researching the growth and production of pineapple plants, which were sent in the mid-1990s, were “intended to be and actually were fraudulent and misleading”.
Del Monte used its lawyers to draft the letters, which suggested it had “learned of an organized effort to steal this planting material from the Del Monte plantation for propagation purposes”.
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By GlobalDataAnother letter warned: “Be advised that Del Monte is the developer of this plant material and intends to protect its interests as necessary,” before quoting a US patent number Del Monte claimed to own. It emerged in Simonton’s ruling, however, that Del Monte does not hold a patent on its Gold pineapple, the MD-2 variety, but rather another variety, CO-2.
Dole argued that the MD-2 variety was developed 31 years ago by the Pineapple Research Institute, which was in part owned by Del Monte.
