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US: Food monopoly will result if Supreme Court sides with soybean co, warns expert

By  |  February 20, 2013

As a controversial patent case in the Supreme Court rages on between Monsanto and a farmer of the company’s patented soybean, one antitrust advocate has warned of an inevitable “long-term food monopoly” if Monsanto were to win the case. Bert Foer of the American Antitrust Institute joined PBS’s Newshour program to discuss the case and to argue that if the Supreme Court sides with Monsanto, it is the equivalent of “putting all the cards with the patentee and very few with the consumers” if the cases solely concerns patent infringement. Monsanto holds patent rights to its soybean seeds and therefore requires buyers of the product to buy new seeds every year rather than replanting seeds resulting from a previous crop. A 75-year-old soybean farmer was sued by Monsanto after he replanted seeds instead of buying directly from Monsanto. According to recent reports, the Court seemed “skeptical” of the farmer’s argument that replanting is not the same as duplicating the seeds.

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