Contents
Article 4Difficulties as regards recognition or reproduction of a variety denomination#
1.There is an impediment due to difficulties as regards recognition or reproduction of a variety denomination where a variety denomination causes its users difficulties as regards its recognition or reproduction.
2.It shall be considered that a variety denomination causes its users difficulties as regards its recognition or reproduction in the following cases:
(a)it consists of, or contains, comparatives or superlatives;
(b)it consists of, or contains, botanical names of species within the group either of agricultural plant species or of vegetable plant species, to which the variety belongs;
(c)it consists of, or contains, breeding and technical terms, unless their use in combination with other terms would not prevent the recognition of the variety denomination as such;
(d)it consists exclusively of a geographical name that has acquired a reputation for the species concerned;
(e)it consists of a single letter or numeral or numerals only, unless this represents an established practice for designating certain varieties;
(f)it consists of, or contains, too many words or elements, unless the flow of the wording makes it easily recognizable;
(g)it contains a punctuation mark or other symbol, an upper and lower case mixture (except where the first letter is in upper case and the rest of the denomination in lower case), subscript, superscript or a design or a figurative element (except the apostrophe (’), the comma (,), up to two non-adjacent exclamation marks (!), the period or full-stop (.), or the hyphen (-), the forward slash (/) or backward slash (\) symbols);
(h)it contains, or consists of, a subscript, a superscript or a design, a logo or a figurative element.
Source: EUR-Lex, © European Union, 1998-2026. Reuse authorised under Decision 2011/833/EU.