Bowman v. Monsanto Co.

Background

Monsanto, a company, invented a genetic change that makes soybean plants survive glyphosate herbicide. It sells Roundup Ready seed under a license that lets a farmer plant one season but forbids saving harvested seed for replanting. Vernon Bowman, an Indiana farmer, bought commodity soybeans from a grain elevator and planted them late in the season. Many of those beans carried the Roundup Ready trait. Bowman applied glyphosate, saved seeds from surviving plants, and repeated this saved-seed planting for eight seasons. Monsanto sued for patent infringement. Lower courts ruled for Monsanto, and the case reached the Court to resolve whether a sale of seed exhausts the patent holder’s rights when a buyer reproduces the seed by planting and harvesting.

Reasoning

The Court addressed whether planting and harvesting purchased patented seed counts as making a new copy. The Court explained that patent exhaustion ends the patentee’s control only over the particular item sold, not over making new copies. It relied on earlier decisions and on the idea that allowing buyers to reproduce a patented item would nullify the patent monopoly after one sale. Because Bowman intentionally planted and harvested to create and market new Roundup Ready seed, the Court found he was making new patented articles, not merely using them, so exhaustion did not protect him.

Real world impact

The decision means farmers cannot avoid seed licenses by buying commodity beans and replanting them to reproduce patented traits. Seed companies can require yearly purchases through licenses that bar saving seed for replanting. The ruling is limited to these facts; the Court left open how exhaustion applies to other self-replicating technologies or cases where reproduction occurs beyond a buyer’s control.