DuPont sues Monsanto in soybean, cotton seed disputes

DuPont alleged that Monsanto induced a subsidiary to provide it with DuPont’s proprietary molecular breeding technology used to grow a better variety of plants and get them to market sooner.

Beginning in 1988, DuPont exchanged this genetic marker technology with Michigan-based Asgrow Seed Co LLC. The result was a soybean seed resistant to DuPont’s sulfonylurea class of herbicides (SU). DuPont expected demand for its sulfonylurea herbicides would increase as sales of sulfonylurea-tolerant soybean seeds, or STS, increased.

Monsanto acquired Asgrow in 1997 and, according to court papers, used DuPont’s technology "to expedite and advance" Monsanto’s development of a competing product, Roundup ready soybeans which are resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup, the world’s largest selling herbicide, the lawsuit says.

"Asgrow and Monsanto have acted with the joint purpose of eliminating STS soybean seeds as a competitor with Roundup Ready soybean seeds in order to facilitate Monsanto’s scheme to monopolise the soybean seed and soybean herbicide markets."

From 1996 through 1999, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready share of the US soybean acreage grew from 1.5 million acres to 35 million acres, or 59 per cent, and the share of the Roundup herbicide increased from 9 to 42 per cent.

In court papers, DuPont claims Monsanto improperly imposed "tying and exclusive dealing arrangements on seed producers and dealers, herbicide dealers and distributors, and growers." If at least 90 per cent of seed sales were not the Roundup Ready variety, incentive plan members lost bonuses and crop insurance.

Monsanto of St Louis, said, in a statement issued Friday, that it has "done nothing wrong and will aggressively defend against all claims by DuPont …. Monsanto is the sole developer of the technology that we sell today."

In a second suit, filed in the US District Court in South Carolina, DuPont claimed again that Monsanto’s alleged "monopolistic" tying agreements helped it grow "explosively" in two years to control 41 per cent of the total 14.6 million acres of cotton grown in the United States in 1999, with 50 percent control projected for 2000.

In 1992, Monsanto and Delta & Pine Land Co collaborated on the genetic engineering of a Roundup Ready cotton seed toxic to the cotton boll weevil. Delta currently controls 85 percent of the domestic cotton seed market, and Monsanto’s Roundup has a 50 percent share of the cotton herbicide market.

DuPont sells the competing herbicide, Staple, but provided no sales figures in its court papers.

In a statement also given to Reuters Friday, DuPont said cotton and soybean growers and herbicide dealers "should be able to select the products that meet their individual needs without being locked into a single supplier."

DuPont stock was trading at around 55-5/16 after opening at 54-1/16. Monsanto was steady at about 49-1/16 after opening at 49-1/2. Both trade on the New York Stock Exchange.