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01/08/08 - Monsanto wins lawsuit over farmer who saved GE seed

The company has sued more than 100 farmers for using seed from previous year's crops.

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday let stand, without comment, a lower court ruling that punished a Mississippi farmer for re-using Monsanto Co.'s patented, genetically modified soybeans.

Monsanto sued Homan McFarling in 1999 for violating its patents by planting biotech seeds that he saved from a previous year's crop. The company won $375,000 in damages, which McFarling's lawyers also challenged as excessive.

Since the late 1990s, Monsanto has pursued similar lawsuits against almost 100 farmers, according to the Center for Food Safety, which opposes the suits and urged the court to take McFarling's case.

McFarling purchased Monsanto's patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds in 1998. The seeds are engineered to withstand Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, enabling farmers to spray their fields with the herbicide without damaging their soybean crops.

McFarling then saved seeds from the 1998 crop to plant Roundup Ready soybeans in 1999 and 2000. Monsanto sued, arguing that a "technology agreement" McFarling signed restricted him to using the seeds for only one growing season.

Lawyers for McFarling, however, argued that patent law doesn't allow Monsanto "to control the future use of seeds that were a natural product of the seeds that he had bought and planted."

But a district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with Monsanto. The appeals court ruled that the second-generation seeds were "nearly identical copies" of Monsanto's patented seeds, and a district court injunction barring their use is "simply a prohibition against unlicensed use of the patented invention."

The case is Homan McFarling v. Monsanto Co., 07-241.