A federal judge says DuPont
Pioneer engaged in fraud in its defense against a patent infringement lawsuit
by rival Monsanto, the Des Moines Register reports this week.
A federal court jury in St. Louis
in August awarded Monsanto $1 billion in damages from DuPont Pioneer.
The jury cited Pioneer’s
unauthorized stacking in soybeans of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetic seed
technology with its own seed traits.
Pioneer’s parent, DuPont, plans
to appeal the verdict and maintains it has told the truth.
The judge’s ruling and the
verdict are part of what Judge Richard Webber called a “vitriolic” legal battle
over patent infringement.
The two companies control about
two-thirds of the North American corn and soybean seed business.
Webber, in preliminary rulings
written a year ago but unsealed only recently, said e-mails from DuPont Pioneer
executives showed that the company knew as early as 2002 that it could not
combine, or “stack,” Pioneer biotechnology traits with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready
genetic trait.
Pioneer had stacked the traits in
a new line of soybean seeds it originally intended to introduce in 2010.
In its defense, DuPont Pioneer
wanted to assert that it always believed that its licensing agreement with
Monsanto for Roundup Ready genetic traits would allow it to mix the Monsanto
trait with its own traits.
But Webber said that e-mails from
Pioneer executives introduced as evidence by Monsanto showed “clear and
convincing evidence that Defendants (DuPont Pioneer) intentionally have made
misrepresentations to the court and in doing so, have perpetrated a fraud
against the court.”
“Such conduct is an abuse of the
judicial process and is sanctionable,” Webber said.
