PepsiCo Permitted To Apply For Patent Rights For Lay's Potato Variety

The Delhi High Court has allowed PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. on Tuesday to claim a patent for a specific type of potato, exclusively used in Lay's chips.

The decision followed a legal dispute where the court considered appeals related to the revocation of PepsiCo's registration for that specific plant variety.

PepsiCo had initially applied for the registration of the specific potato variety on Feb. 18, 2011, describing it as a "new" variety with the date of the first commercial sale noted as Dec. 17, 2009. After a revision submitted in 2012, PepsiCo received the registration certificate on Feb. 1, 2016.

However, the company filed a revocation application on the registration certificate received on June 17, 2019, claiming incorrect information, protection to an ineligible person, failure to provide necessary information, and non-compliance with Act rules.

The single judge, in the course of the revocation proceedings, identified that the first sale of that potato variety was in 2002 in Chile, contrary to PepsiCo's application indicating the date as Dec. 17, 2009.

In PepsiCo's appeal from the order of the single judge, the high court said that the power of revocation should only be exercised in situations affecting eligibility or validity. It rejected the argument that incorrect information about the date of the first sale should be a determinative factor for revocation.

The court disagreed with the single judge's view on the incorrect mentioning of the date of the first sale and related conclusions about PepsiCo's eligibility to apply for registration and non-submission of relevant documentation.