The public needs to have access to patented “biological material” in order to ensure innovation and competition in the seed industry, the Justice Department says in a statement of interest filed in a case pitting Corteva Agriscience against Inari Agriculture.
Corteva sued Inari in 2023 alleging patent infringement of its seed technology. Specifically, “Inari deliberately used a third-party agent to obtain protected Corteva seeds, illegally exported the seeds out of the United States, made slight genetic modifications of the biotech traits and is seeking U.S. patents for those modified traits,” the company said in a news release when it filed the lawsuit.
Inari disputes the allegations and last month, both companies filed motions for summary judgment in the case, which is in federal court in Delaware.
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The statement of interest “reaffirms the importance of the public’s ability to access and read patented biological material, which promotes follow-on innovation and competition in the seeds industry,” DOJ said in a news release.
The court “should not deem any activity to constitute ‘infringement’ if it is a means of accessing and ‘reading’ biological material that the law requires be made publicly available in exchange for a valid patent or other [intellectual property] protection,” the statement says.
“Corteva argues that it only deposited seeds with the [the American Type Culture Collection] ‘for the purpose of protecting Corteva’s patent rights,’” the statement says.
But it adds, “Corteva is correct that such deposits do protect the applicant — after all, the applicant is not entitled to any IP protection and insulation from competition without adequate disclosure. But Corteva disregards the countervailing public benefit from disclosure of its patented material to the market.”
