HispanicBusiness

Most of those farmers simply saved and replanted second-generation seeds. Bowman did things differently.

Monsanto does not require a separate agreement to purchase commodity beans, which are second-generation beans typically used for animal feed and in industrial applications, not for planting.

Bowman, for years, grew Roundup Ready beans on his 300-acre farm in southwestern Indiana. He signed the licensing agreement and adhered to the agreement not to save and replant seeds. But in 1999, looking for bargain-priced soybeans to plant a second, late-season crop, Bowman bought some commodity beans. He figured they were Roundup Ready as well, and he was right.

When Monsanto learned that Bowman was, in its view, making an end run around its contract, the company sued, arguing it retained rights even though there was no agreement specific to that transaction. The district court agreed, delivering an $84,456 judgment against Bowman; the appellate court concurred.

A group of attorneys and academics came to Bowman's aid. Their concern, they say, is that Monsanto and the biotechnology industry have used hundreds of patents to control research and innovation that belong in the public domain.

Until 1970, Congress did not allow patents on staple crops, and thereafter only allowed exclusive marketing rights that allowed farmers to save seeds. But in 1980, the Supreme Court decided in a controversial 5-4 case that living organisms could be patented.

In the rush to claim patents, four companies -- Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow -- emerged as the dominant forces, according to a report last week from the Center for Food Safety.

"Dozens of mergers and acquisitions followed; at least 200 independent seed companies were bought and consolidated from 1996 to 2009," the center wrote. "As a consequence, what was once a freely exchanged, renewable resource is now privatized and monopolized."

As a result, the center says, the average cost to plant one acre of soybeans has risen 325 percent since the introduction of genetically engineered seed, to $56.68 from $13.32.

Critics also say that farmers have fewer seed choices.

"The companies are making their best, highest-yielding variety seeds available only in the genetically engineered version," said Bill Freese, a policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, "so they don't have a choice of good conventional seed."

Freese challenges Monsanto's claim that a win for Bowman would kill seed innovation. According to a Bloomberg analysis, roughly 13 percent of the company's $13.5 billion revenue in 2012 revenue came from soybean sales. "The majority of revenue in the industry comes from corn seeds that no one replants anyway," he said.

Monsanto says it spends roughly $1.5 billion a year on research and development -- money it says it can't recoup if patent law doesn't cover seed progeny. Many supporters from business and academia agree that R&D budgets will be decimated unless there is a return on the investment.

"In a short period of time, the market for the technology would become saturated with copies," wrote the authors of a brief filed by 16 universities and representative groups.

"This would devalue existing patents directed to artificial, progenitive technologies and remove any incentive for private sector entities to license and develop future technologies of this kind. Ultimately, the public may never benefit from such inventions."

The brief goes on to say that while Bowman was authorized to use the first-generation seed, he "was not authorized to plant subsequent generations of seeds for the purpose of 'making' even more generations of seeds containing the patented trait."

The difference here, some attorneys say, is that the patented item is a product of nature that regenerates on its own.

"Are they going to take nature into account? Are they going to take into account that this is what beans do?" asked Yvette Liebesman, a law professor at St. Louis University. "You can patent anything under the sun created by a human. If a plant is doing what plants do, is that something that humans have done?"

Monsanto has an answer for that.

"This is not just a seed," Snively said, "and to suggest that plants just grow themselves is preposterous."