The Public Patend Foundation and More class-action suits against Monsanto

PUBPAT Challenges Monsanto Patents Being Used To Bankrupt American Farmers

September 29, 2006

Patent Office Asked to Review and Revoke Agricultural Giant's Widely Asserted Patents

New York, NY -- The Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") filed formal requests with the United States Patent and Trademark Office today to review and ultimately revoke four of Monsanto Company's patents related to genetically modified crops that the agricultural giant is using to harass, intimidate, sue - and in some cases literally bankrupt - American farmers. In its filings, PUBPAT submitted prior art showing the patents were obvious in light of earlier work by other inventors and, as such, should have never been granted.

Monsanto has filed dozens of patent infringement lawsuits asserting the four challenged patents against American farmers, many of whom are unable to hire adequate representation to defend themselves in court. The crime these farmers are accused of is nothing more than saving seed from one year's crop to replant the following year, something farmers have done since the beginning of time. The Center for Food Safety found in its study of the matter that, "Monsanto has used heavy-handed investigations and ruthless prosecutions that have fundamentally changed the way many American farmers farm. The result has been nothing less than an assault on the foundations of farming practices and traditions that have endured for centuries in this country and millennia around the world, including one of the oldest, the right to save and replant crop seed."

"Monsanto's aggressive assertion of its patents is not only obnoxious and offensive to the core fabric of American life and culture, it is also causing substantial public harm," said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT's Executive Director. "It appears as though Monsanto wants to control all of America's farmland and - unfortunately - the patent system is providing them the perfect means to accomplish that goal by bullying independent and family owned farms right out of existence."

Copies of the Requests for Reexamination filed by PUBPAT against the four patents Monsanto is widely asserting against America's famers can be found at PUBPAT > Monsanto v. Farmer Patents.

Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers Report

2005 report documents Monsanto's lawsuits against American farmers, revealing thousands of investigations, nearly 100 lawsuits and numerous bankruptcies.

Monsanto Sued For Alleged Glyphosate Monopoly

By Jeff Caldwell
Agriculture Online News
September 28, 2006

Plaintiffs say company unfairly dominates market years after Roundup patent expired

The Monsanto Company is the target of a class-action antitrust lawsuit filed this week in federal court.

Pullen Seeds and Soil, based in Sac City, Iowa, led the group filing Pullen Seeds and Soil v. Monsanto Company, No. 06-599, Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Plaintiffs allege the company violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, as it allegedly has a monopoly over the glyphosate herbicide marketplace with its Roundup products. Monsanto's patent on Roundup product name expired in 2000.

"During the post-patent period...Roundup has maintained an 80% (or more) market share of all the glyphosate herbicides sold in the United States despite Monsanto's charging dealers 300% to 400% more for brand-name Roundup than the price charged by generic competitors," according to the Pullen v. Monsanto court document filed Tuesday. "Monsanto's ability to charge higher prices for Roundup is the result of a comprehensive anticompetitive scheme which Monsanto began implementing in the 1990s."

In the class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday, Pullen, a licensed grower of Monsanto's soybeans and corn containing glyphosate tolerance and seller of Monsanto seed, is joined by an estimated 100,000 class members around the nation (1,000 in Iowa), according to Iowa State University agriculture law specialist and ag law center director Roger McEowen. But, according to Monsanto spokesman and public affairs manager Andrew Burchett, the anticompetitive practices named in the suit do not exist.

"There are dozens of different brands and formulations of glyphosate available from more than 30 different companies in the United States," Burchett says. "This is far more competition than exists with regard to any other agricultural chemical."

Plaintiffs also allege Monsanto retained product exclusivity "by acquiring seed companies that were developing modified seed technology, eliminating those products that could have led to the development of genetically modified seeds that could be used with non-glyphosate herbicide," according to McEowen.

"These efforts to block the development of competing genetically modified seeds had a direct effect on Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide monopoly because had competing seeds been developed, farmers would have had a choice not only to buy competing seeds, but also to use different types of herbicides instead of glyphosate," according to the court document. "Thus, the development of these competing seeds would have created an increased demand for other non-glyphosate herbicides that would have competed with Roundup.

"This would have dramatically reduced Roundup's market dominance and Monsanto's ability to charge monopoly prices," the document reads.

Also at issue in the Pullen case is the practice of "bundling" crop input products like herbicides with seed. While this is not uncommon in the crop seed industry, it could become a major argument in the case.

"In addition to the exclusive dealing requirements with its seed company licensees, Pullen claims that Monsanto has used various types of bundled rebates to ensure that seed companies produce and sell seed containing Monsanto's seed traits virtually exclusively," McEowen says.

Yet, the arguments used by Pullen, et. al., according to Burchett, are not new and instead appear to be attempts to find holes in previously resolved cases.

"This complaint appears to recycle old allegations regarding our marketing and pricing of glyphosate -- complaints that DuPont and others previously have made in lawsuits and which were the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that was closed in 2004 with no enforcement action," Burchett says. "We believe this complaint is without merit and will vigorously defend against it."

The process now awaits the formal organization of the plaintiff class, which McEowen says will seek "declaratory and injunctive relief for Monsanto's alleged violations...and treble damages under Iowa antitrust law for the overcharges Pullen and other class members have paid." He estimates the "very difficult" case could take up to 10 years.

Calls to Pullen Seeds and Soil were not returned.

Both articles posted directly from Say not to gmo website.