Bowman v. Monsanto: Supreme Court's Limited Ruling Does Not Address Other Self-Replicating Technology or the Conditional Sale Doctrine

摘要

In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Kagan, on May 13,2013, the US Supreme Court held that the patent exhaustion doctrine does not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder's permission. By using seeds that were only licensed to grow a single commercial crop to instead grow multiple new generations of seed, Vernon Bowman infringed Monsanto's patents for the Roundup Ready trait used in soybean seeds. In affirming the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Supreme Court expressly limited its holding to application of the exhaustion doctrine in the context of self-replicating seeds. The Supreme Court's opinion did, however, suggest the possibility of a different result if the self-replication occurred outside the purchaser's control or if the self-replication was "a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose."