WILMINGTON — Corteva was awarded the go-ahead by a Delaware federal court to continue a lawsuit against Inari Agriculture, citing alleged intellectual property law and patent violations.
Originally filed last year by Corteva Agriscience LLC along with subsidiaries Pioneer Hi-Bred, International, Inc. and Agrigenetics, Inc. against Inari Agriculture, Inc. and Inari Agriculture NV., the United States District Court for the District of Delaware denied a motion to dismiss the now amended complaint as of Friday, Aug. 2.
The opinion, written by U.S. District Judge John Murphy, refers to the parties above as simply “Corteva” and “Inari” throughout the 25-page documents.
The players
Corteva Agriscience, a global agriculturally based chemical and seed company, was originally unveiled by the merged DowDuPont brand in 2018 and became an independent company incorporated in the First State in 2019. Although it moved its headquarters to Indianapolis in February 2022, Corteva remains incorporated in Delaware.
Although DowDuPont has been dissolved since 2019, Corteva continues to add to its collective and innovative history which includes a plethora of agricultural and commonly used products dating as far back as 1802.
Inari Agriculture, similarly global in nature, was founded in 2016 by scientists and leaders behind Massachusetts life sciences company Flagship Pioneering which formally unveiled the new entity in 2018 with a mission of building a more sustainable food system through biotechnology as it relates to genetics and agriscience work.
The memorandum from the court details Inari’s recent success by stating that the company has grown “to over 270 employees at several locations including Cambridge, Massachusetts and Ghent, Belgium, and [reports] a $1.5 billion valuation.”
The issue at hand
“The amended complaint in this case tells the story of a competitor, Inari, who wanted to use and improve upon Corteva’s plant technology without asking nicely,” Murphy wrote in the court memorandum.
According to the document, Corteva deposited corn seeds in an authorized depository for a strain it wished to patent, variety DP-004114-3 or U.S. Patent No. 8,575,434 (also known as the ‘434 Patent), as requested by the patenting process. Corteva detailed depositing a total of 2,500 of the patentable seeds at the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) located in Manassas, Va. without waiving “any infringement of their rights granted under this patent or rights applicable. . . under the Plant Variety Protection Act.”
The complaint, however, contends that Inari removed seeds as allowed from ATCC, which is a non-profit depository open and accessible to the public, but also acknowledges ATCC policies and a signed standard material transfer agreement between ATCC and Inari which restricts the public from commercial use of seeds purchased from the depository.
Inari also stated that the conversion of intellectual property isn’t recognized by Massachusetts law, however the amended complaint describes the conversion of the physical seeds rather than intellectual property.
The back and forth continues as Corteva further contends that the new seed variety it deposited for patent purposes involves elements that already have Plant Variety Protection certificates – those previously created and protected seeds must be deposited into the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation which is not available to public access.
The complaint alleges that Inari Belgium ultimately purchased the seeds from the depository which were then shipped to Belgium by Inari, reproduced and used to develop its own genetically modified strains of corn. At that point, “. . . Inari attempted to extort Corteva into a business arrangement by telling Corteva that it was prepared to commercialize corn products with a derivative of the event covered by the 434 patent.”
The memorandum written by the judge highlighted Inari’s position stating that, among other points, Inari believes its use of the seeds was allowable as it occurred outside of the United States.
Motion denied
“What Inari is missing is that the rules do not require that Corteva give the world a blanket license to its invention just because it deposited the seeds. The public is entitled to availability of the deposits — not to exploit them in any way,” the judge wrote in the court’s decision to deny Inari’s motion.
Murphy further explained in his opening statements in the document, “We want inventors to share their ideas with the world rather than keep them secret. So in exchange for limited exclusivity, inventors teach us how the trick was done. Competitors get the benefit of that knowledge. And they may make improvements, and even be rewarded with their own patents on those improvements. But the competitor does not get a free license to use the original invention however it wishes. That’s Patent Law 101, and easy enough to understand when everything is on paper.”
Inari Agriculture has not responded to requests for comment as of press time and Corteva declined to provide comment to the Delaware Business Times.
