March 26 (Bloomberg) -- DuPont Co. and Monsanto Co. agreed to dismiss their respective antitrust and soybean patent lawsuits and enter into licensing agreements for making genetically modified crops.
Monsanto will dismiss its claim that DuPont infringed patents for Roundup Ready soybeans and DuPont will dismiss its claim that Monsanto uses uses monopoly power to stifle innovation, the companies said today in a joint statement. Both lawsuits have been pending in U.S. federal court in St. Louis.
DuPont’s Pioneer seed unit will license the newest versions of Monsanto soybeans engineered to tolerate Roundup and other weedkillers and make a series of royalty payments to Monsanto totaling $1.75 billion through 2023, the companies said.
The agreement follows recent legal victories by St. Louis- based Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, over DuPont in the $34 billion seed market. A U.S. jury in August ordered DuPont to pay Monsanto $1 billion for infringing seed patents. The U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general late last year dropped probes into industry antitrust concerns raised by DuPont.
--Editors: Simon Casey, Jessica Resnick-Ault
To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Kaskey in Houston at jkaskey@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net
