Totilas Breeding Rights Stay with Schockemöhle

A Dutch court has awarded German sport horse supremo Paul Schockemöhle the right to exclusively sell the frozen semen of dressage legend Totilas, after a long legal battle with the horse’s previous owner Kees Visser.

Visser, a Dutch multi millionaire businessman, sold Totilas to Schockemöhle in 2010 for a reported 9.5 million euros after his world title victory for the Netherlands under Edward Gal. Visser kept 244 straws of frozen semen purportedly for his private breeding interests. But after Totilas died 2020, he decided to sell them – meeting strong resistance from Schockemöhle.

Schockemöhle argued he had obtained the exclusive breeding rights in 2010. Two successive courts in Germany imposed a sales ban on Visser (“Fight Over Totilas Breeding Rights Ends Up in Court“) most recently in spring 2022.

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Visser moved the battle to the Netherlands last year. He made a counter claim for 18 million euros, arguing that about 20 embryos could be created from each of his 244 straws. He claimed to have sold only the horse to Schockemöhle, with no agreement about breeding rights or frozen sperm.

In this latest legal action, Schockemöhle asked the court to force Visser to hand over all 244 withheld straws. Previously, Schockemöhle’s Dutch business partner Joop van Uytert, who is not a party to the legal proceedings, found a bailiff on his doorstep, seizing six of Schockemöhle’s dressage horses and all the Totilas straws on the premises. It is not yet known how Schockemöhle will get them back.

Maud van den Berg, Schockemöhle’s Dutch lawyer, said of the Arnhem verdict: “It’s deliberate, feels fair and just and does justice to what really happened.”

Towards the end of the Arnhem proceedings, Visser’s lawyer Luc Schelstraete said the legal argument boiled down to this: “You sell a chicken, and the eggs are in the warehouse. Do you sell the eggs?” He said Visser “unequivocally disagrees” with the latest ruling.