REUTERS / Henry Romero |
Four weeks
into a trial between two titans of the biotech industry, Monsanto Co. claimed
on Tuesday that its biggest competitor, DuPont, owes them $1 billion for infringing
on their patent for herbicide-tolerant lab-made crops.
Monsanto
insisted this week that rival company DuPont owes them $1 billion for producing
genetically modified crops that were designed to withstand the herbicide
Roundup, a technology for which the leading biotech corporation has a patent
for. Monsanto’s accusations are based on hundreds of lines of DuPont-made
soybean crops that combined the patented Roundup Ready trait with their own
herbicide immunity called GAT. Although DuPont claims that their products
performed better than Monsanto’s crops by combining technologies from both
companies, Monsanto maintains that DuPont infringed on their copyright going
back several years and should now compensate them to the tune of $1 billion.
DuPont has
filed a counterclaim in response under the argument that Monsanto deceived the
US government in getting patent approval for their Roundup Ready crops.
Attorneys for DuPont say that Monsanto was not clear with the US Patent and
Trademark Office about what genes used in their Roundup Ready crops actually
helped organisms fight off herbicides, allowing them wide breadth to thwart
similar attempts at the technology from its competitors.
“It was
intentional because Monsanto didn’t want people to know what was inside the
bag, what was inside the seed,” Leora Ben-Ami, a DuPont lawyer with Kirkland
& Ellis, told the court on July 10, Bloomberg News reports. “Monsanto
didn’t want people to know how the seed was made.”
By creating
plants resistant to herbicides, farmers are able to harvest an abundance of
laboratory-produced seeds and douse their fields in chemicals, killing off
weeds while at the same time sparing their money crops. Outside of the
industry, though, opponents claim that the chemicals used in the herbicides are
being used ad nauseam and consumers are being put to risk.
Analyst
Chris Shaw of New York’s Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. tells Bloomberg that he
thinks DuPont’s counterclaim will fail in court, and that both companies will
likely settle out of court.
“They’re
going to reach some mutually beneficial agreement even if one loses the trial,”
Shaw says. “Ultimately both need each other, given the market share.”
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Farming Groups Supporting Dow's Controversial Genetically Modified Corn Have Financial And Executive Backing From Agricultural Biotech Industry
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