Dive Brief:
- DuPont is suing Monsanto Co. alleging unpaid royalties that Monsanto owes the company for the use of a gene-gun technology called Biolistic, which injects soybean cells with genetic material that enables the plant to be resistant to herbicides.
- According to the lawsuit, DuPont required Monsanto to pay royalties on the Biolistic technology, and the dispute began in 2008. Monsanto had stopped paying, saying some of DuPont's patents had expired in July 2007.
- Legal documents say that Monsanto aimed to resolve the issue through binding arbitration, and an arbitration panel required Monsanto to pay royalties to DuPont through the end of that year, 2012. In the lawsuit, DuPont said Monsanto did not make final payments after using the technology on South American crops, which Monsanto said were null and void because the agreement had expired at that point.
Dive Insight:
While DuPont has been steaming over this issue for some time, Monsanto seems puzzled that this lawsuit would come up at all. In an email to the News Journal, Sarah Miller, a Monsanto spokeswoman, said, “We are surprised and puzzled that DuPont would chose to sue over the arbitration case, which involves royalties of less than $7 million and over a dispute that has been silent for two years."