By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent
 
NEW YORK, N.Y. — The Public Patent Foundation (Pubpat), a not-for-profit legal group, has sued Monsanto Co. to challenge the validity of its patents on seeds. The suit was filed March 29 in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York as Organic Seed Growers & Trade Assoc., et. al. v. Monsanto.

“This case asks whether Monsanto has the right to sue organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto’s transgenic seed should land on their property,” said Pubpat Executive Director Dan Ravicher in a statement.
“It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement, so we had to act to protect the interests of our clients.”
Lucy Sharratt, coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, echoed Ravicher’s comments.

“The Pubpat lawsuit is a preventive measure to protect farmers from being sued by the largest seed company in the world,” she said. “It’s a step farmers feel they need to take.”

In the complaint, Pubpat paints a picture of society gone awry because of biotechnology. Society “stands on the precipice of forever being bound to transgenic agriculture and transgenic food,” the complaint reads.
Monsanto responded to the lawsuit with its own statement denying that it ever sues farmers that have small amounts of transgenic seed on their land through no fault of their own.

“We’ve briefly read the allegations of the Pubpat suit and press statement and find many of these allegations to be false, misleading and deceptive,” the statement reads. “It has never been, nor will it be, Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmers’ fields as a result of inadvertent means.”

The Pubpat lawsuit also states coexistence between transgenic seed and organic is “impossible because transgenic seed contaminates and eventually overcomes organic seed.” Monsanto rejects this claim.

“While we respect the opinion of organic farmers as it relates to the products they choose to grow, we don’t believe that American agriculture faces an all-or-nothing approach,” Monsanto’s statement reads. “

Rather, we believe that farmers should have the ability to choose the best agricultural tools to farm their own land and serve their own end-market customers. We are confident that these multiple approaches can coexist side-by-side and sustainably meet the world’s food needs over the next 40 years.”
The statement describes the lawsuit as a “publicity stunt” designed to confuse the facts. Monsanto has several pages online devoted to the issue of why it sues farmers. It says it sells its patented seeds to 275,000 farmers every year and that it requires farmers to sign a contract agreeing not to save and replant patented seed. It says most farmers honor the agreement, but a few don’t.
When it finds out about a farmer that may be violating his contract, the company usually is able to reach a settlement with the farmer. In 144 cases, however, it didn’t reach a settlement, and sued. Monsanto says nine of those cases have gone to a full trial and all of those were decided in the company’s favor.

Monsanto says it pursues its rights through the courts in order to be paid for its products and that it donates proceeds of these court actions to “youth leadership initiatives.”

A spokesman for Monsanto who was contacted last week declined to elaborate on the company’s official statements.