A legal ruling says DuPont violated its contract with rival Monsanto by developing genetically modified soybeans created with Monsanto’s technology, but leaves open DuPont’s challenge of the contract on antitrust grounds.
The ruling in St Louis federal court is the latest turn in a lawsuit between the world’s two biggest seed companies. At issue is how much freedom Monsanto Co’s competitors have to develop crops containing their own biotech traits using Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready gene, which is inserted in the vast majority of US corn and soybean crops.
The Roundup Ready gene makes crops resistant to its Roundup herbicide, making weed control cheaper and easier for farmers because they can spray the herbicide without hurting their crop.
The trait has become the industry standard since Monsanto introduced it in 1996.
Monsanto sued DuPont last spring, claiming it was illegal for DuPont to sell its new line of biotech seeds called Optimum GAT.
That line of seeds adds a new DuPont gene to the older line of Roundup Ready corn and soybean plants that DuPont developed under a license with Monsanto.
US District Judge Richard Webber said in Friday’s ruling that Monsanto’s licensing agreement clearly prohibits DuPont from inserting its Optimum GAT gene into corn and soybean plants with Monsanto traits.
But Webber said his ruling was narrow and didn’t consider whether Monsanto has the right under antitrust laws to restrict how competitors breed and sell plants with Monsanto traits.
DuPont is challenging its licensing agreement with Monsanto on antitrust grounds, in the midst of a US Department of Justice antitrust investigation into Monsanto that is examining whether there is anticompetitive behavior in the seed industry.
“This litigation is just beginning; we will now vigorously pursue our antitrust, license and patent fraud claims,” DuPont senior vice president and general counsel Thomas Sager said in a statement on Saturday.
Monsanto spokesman Lee Quarles said DuPont’s claims of antitrust violations in the contract are a “continued smoke screen and effort to obscure the significance of the court’s ruling on their license violation.”
“As we’ve stated clearly over the last several months, DuPont negotiated and signed a contract with a specific set of rights, at the financial terms they preferred, and the rights they licensed did not include making” Optimum GAT, Quarles said in an e-mail on Saturday.
Monsanto announced this week that the Justice Department demanded internal documents related to the company’s soybean business.
Quarles said the company has done nothing wrong and is cooperating with the department, providing the millions of pages of documents it requested.
DuPont spokesman Dan Turner said Friday’s ruling would not change or delay the company’s efforts to commercialize its Optimum GAT seeds, which the company says will be an alternative to Monsanto’s products.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS