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Monsanto has asserted its "Roundup Ready" Soybean patents against farmers. Monsanto's Roundup® brand herbicide kills vegetation by inhibiting the metabolic activity of a particular enzyme, common in plants, that is necessary for the conversion of sugars into amino acids. Herbicides that have glyphosate as the active ingredient are non-selective; that is, they kill all types of plants whether the plant is a weed or a crop. In addition to developing and selling herbicides, Monsanto sells other products made using biotechnology. Monsanto has developed Roundup Ready® Technology, which involves inserting a chimeric gene into a seed that allows the plant to advantageously continue to break down sugars in the presence of glyphosate. Crops grown from such seeds are resistant to Roundup® and other glyphosate-based herbicides. When Roundup Ready® seeds are planted and used in conjunction with a glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup Ready® plants will survive, while weeds and other plants lacking the Roundup Ready® gene will be killed. Monsanto has claimed this technology in US Patent 5352605 "Chimeric genes for transforming plant cells using viral promoters"
In one case Monsanto sued a large scale soybean farmer named David who was found to have saved a portion of his soybean seeds and planted them the following year. David also signed Monsanto's technology agreement which stipulates that buyers may use the seeds for the planting of only a single commercial crop, but that no seeds from that crop may be saved for future harvests.
In Monsanto v. David (Fed. Cir. 2008) the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit refused to reexamine the question of whether plant genes are patentable under Section 101 citing Monsanto Co. v. McFarling, 302 F.3d 1291 (Fed. Cir. 2002). In McFarling, the CAFC held that a farmer who saved seed containing a patented gene was liable for patent infringement.
The Monsanto Roundup Ready GMO Patent is discussed at Patently-O. |
