Bayer Ordered To Pay $5 Million To Dow Over Corn Patent Loss

Matt Hopkins Posted by Matt Hopkins|10 June 2010

GHENT, Belgium — Aventis CropScience NV — acquired by Bayer CropScience in 2002 and now known as Bayer BioScience NV — filed a lawsuit in North Carolina, US, charging Dow AgroSciences LLC with infringement upon four genetically modified (GM) corn patents. That suit was stayed pending the outcome of a similar suit brought by Monsanto Co. against Bayer in Missori, US, over the same patents. The Missouri court ruled that the four GM corn patents were invalid, due to “inequitable conduct before the US Patent and Trademark Office,” reports Law360. The Missouri decision was reversed by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, remanding the case for trial. However, the trial resulted in the same decision — that the Bayer patents were invalid — and the judge ruled the case exceptional, which allowed Monsanto to seek attorneys’ fees from Bayer, a decision affirmed by the Federal Circuit court. Bayer was ordered to pay attorneys’ fees of almost $8.4 million to Monsanto in the Missouri decision.

After the stay was lifted in the North Carolina case in Dec. 2008, Bayer was unable to argue against the findings in the Missouri case that the patents were invalid and the case exceptional, which opened up Bayer to an order to pay $4.9 million to Dow for its attorneys’ fees.

A second defendant in the case, DuPont business Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., previously settled its fees request with Bayer.
 

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