Monsanto wins lawsuit against Indiana soybean farmer

More on the outrage of plant and seed patents: from the Mother Nature Network: Monsanto wins lawsuit against Indiana soybean farmer: “Monsanto claimed intellectual property infringement when a farmer used the company’s patented seeds from a commodity seed bag. … “. Some excerpts:

Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed company, has prevailed in another lawsuit against a U.S. farmer, earning a ruling from a federal appeals court that protects Monsanto’s interests even when its patented seeds are sold in a mix of undifferentiated “commodity” seeds.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington issued its ruling Wednesday, affirming the lower court decision that favored Monsanto.

The St. Louis, Mo.-based company sued Indiana soybean farmer Vernon Bowman in 2007, accusing Bowman of patent infringement for planting and saving seeds that contained Monsanto’s genetically altered Roundup Ready technology even though Bowman said he bought those seeds as part of a mix of commodity seeds.

Commodity seeds come from farms that use Roundup Ready technology as well as those that do not without differentiation. No licensing agreements are required with the sale of such seeds.

Monsanto restricts grower use of its licensed Roundup Ready seed to a single commercial crop season. Roundup Ready seeds tolerate spray treatments of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

The court found that while the technology agreements Monsanto requires growers to adhere to forbids farmers from selling the progeny of Roundup Ready seeds, those agreements do not extend to second-generation seed.

In fact, Monsanto authorizes the growers to sell their second-generation seed to grain elevators as a commodity and does not require restrictions on grain elevators’ subsequent sales of that seed, the court said.

But that still does not give growers a green light to replicate Monsanto’s patented technology by planting it in the ground to create “newly infringing genetic material, seeds and plants,” the court found.

“The attempt to limit the applicability of patent rights was again squarely rejected by the court,” Monsanto said in a statement.

See also another Monsanto case in Canada from a few years ago:

Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser [2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada case on patent rights for biotechnology. The court heard the question of whether growing genetically modified plants constitutes “use” of the patented invention of genetically modified plant cells. By a narrow 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it does. The case drew worldwide attention.