Biotech Updates

DuPont, BASF Drop Patent Suits

January 15, 2010

DuPont and BASF Plant Science announced they have reached an agreement on a patent infringement dispute.

In June 2009, DuPont and BASF filed suit against each other that sought to enforce intellectual property rights relating to herbicide-tolerance technology. BASF sued DuPont and its owned subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred International over an alleged unlawful use of its patented promoter in DuPont's glyphosate and ALS herbicide-tolerant Optimum GAT corn. DuPont, on the other hand, filed a lawsuit against BASF claiming the German chemical company is infringing four patents related to biotechnology traits similar to those used in the Optimum GAT trait.

DuPont and BASF have now reached an agreement to cross-license patents and dismiss their claims and counterclaims against each other in both of the cases.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The media release is available at http://www.agro.basf.com/