Why We're Suing DuPont

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Updated: Why We're Suing DuPont

Companies that choose to engage in litigation will tell you the path to the courthouse is trod with measured steps. So was the case when Monsanto filed a patent infringement suit May 4 against E.I. DuPont Nemours and Company, parent company of Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.

Pioneer is one of our top competitors and a valued licensee of our seed trait technologies. Followers of our industry know we share a strong rivalry as seed providers as well as a relationship through license agreements. Innovation in agriculture provides our grower customers with products critical to helping meet future global food demand. Licensing these products to other companies enables the further development of new technologies—and gives more farmer customers the choice to use technologies that help them to be more successful on their farms. As an industry leader, DuPont serves a wide range of markets – including and beyond agriculture - through the licensing of its technologies.

So, what’s Monsanto’s opposition to Pioneer stacking their Optimum GAT trait with our Roundup Ready trait?

Carl Casale explains DuPont’s unauthorized use of Roundup Ready technology

The Monsanto-DuPont Agreement
Back in 2002, when we signed our latest agreement, both DuPont and Monsanto agreed Monsanto would license Roundup Ready to DuPont for use in Pioneer’s seeds. At that time, DuPont agreed they would not stack our glyphosate-tolerant product, Roundup Ready, with any other type of glyphosate tolerance trait, which is exactly what Optimum GAT is.

This was important to us because Roundup Ready is our franchise technology. It works well and is the industry gold standard for weed control. Combining it with other forms of glyphosate tolerance creates unnecessary variables, including stewardship concerns and regulatory questions.

We do not believe two forms of glyphosate tolerance in one seed offer a benefit to farmers. However, if through such a combination yield performance could be practically and reliably achieved, any stewardship concerns could be adequately addressed, and farmers and their markets would not be put at risk, Monsanto would be open to serious commercial discussions about how to deliver that value to U.S. growers in a way that respects our rights and the value of our intellectual property.

Innovation in the Marketplace
True innovation is research-and-development that ultimately provides farmers with game changing technology. Monsanto strives to be a leader in innovation and deliver value to the farmers who use our technology—and the more than 200 companies that license it.

True innovation is delivered by companies that respect patents and contractual agreements, and deliver new products through their own innovations. And that’s why we’re working with our peers in the industry – companies like BASF, Bayer CropScience and Dow AgroSciences – to do just that. DuPont’s unauthorized use of our technology and patents is simply unacceptable.

DuPont and Pioneer will likely continue to create smokescreen and rhetoric intended to divert a sympathetic ear to why their misuse of our technology is a good thing. None of that changes the fundamental issue: the unauthorized use of Monsanto’s technology is an apparent attempt to remedy unacceptable risk posed by DuPont’s product.

See a timeline of DuPont’s changing story about its Optimum GAT technology