Bowman Vs Monsanto Case Study

The case of Bowman v. Monsanto Company, Case No. 11-796, was brought to the United States Supreme Court on February 19, 2013. The plaintiff Monsanto patented a soybean that resisted its own Round Up Ready herbicide (“Supreme Court,” n.d). Monsanto Company constructed a contract for farmers to sign prior to using the seeds. The contract obligates farmers to acknowledge the intent of never saving seeds from the resulting crop. This meant that the farmer would be obliged to purchase new seeds annually. The patented soybean was said to be violated by Vernon Bowman.
Respondent Monsanto is one of the 6 top biotechnologies in the United States, who developed a genetic material that enabled the company to put new genetic material into plants. It is …show more content…
Monsanto," n.d). The original purchase was for Monsanto’s Pioneer Hi-Bred seed, which had a patent on the material that was carefully and thoroughly made aware of to all farmers using their seed. The patent called for being able to use the seed for a single and one time use only. There were to be no copies made, nor reselling of the seed to other buyers, although the growers could resell the second-generation seeds to a grain elevator. Bowman, however, was accused of not follow the rules of the contract after he was informed when he first made his purchases in 1999. He did not resell his seeds, but in 1999 as well, he had made a purchase of second-generation seeds from a grain elevator to make his second planting (“Bowman v. Monsanto," n.d).
Bowman was accused of planting a batch of seeds and then spraying the crops with round-up. After spraying the crops with round-up Bowman used the seeds from the crops that survived to plant the next year and this continued on for some time (“Bowman v. Monsanto," n.d). When buying the seeds from Monsanto, customers had to sign a contract in which they promised not to keep the seeds from the crops they got from Monsanto’s seeds. This resulted in customers having