Monsanto Patents Method For Extracting Plants From Soil

Story by Ben Plowman 

| Published Nov 17, 2009

In a surprising move by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office yesterday, The Monsanto Company was granted a patent for the "extraction of plants from the soil by use of water, sunlight and seeds," a method the company is calling “PhotoSymphony.” The multinational agricultural company, which is the largest seed company in the world and is best known for its Roundup Ready brand of seeds, first filed the patent application over two years ago.


“This is a momentous day for our company,” said Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant in a televised press conference. “The hard work and dedication of Monsanto scientists will help increase yields worldwide on everything from trees to corn when compared to other growing techniques, which lack our specially engineered combination of water and sunlight.”


Monsanto celebrated the landmark patent by letting all 22,000 of its employees go home early and catalogue any house plants or gardens they might have so that appropriate licensing fees could be deducted from their next paycheck.


Environmental groups including Greenpeace are up in arms after the patent announcement, staging a mass Facebook petition to ask President Barack Obama to revoke the patent. In a series of posts on its Web site, Greenpeace decried the new method of plant production as “unsafe, untested, and unsustainable,” pointing to catastrophes in places like India, where rural farmers switching to Monsanto seeds experienced financial ruin and, in over 2,000 cases, committed suicide.


CEO Hugh Grant also addressed critics in his speech, saying that “Crops grown using our new PhotoSymphony technology will be hardier and more productive than any other plants on the market. And, because this method is 100 percent organic, you can rest assured that it’s safe.”


UNL Intellectual Property Law Professor Robert Denicola said in an interview that invalidating Monsanto’s new patent will be more difficult than merely signing a petition. “The real challenge is that you must prove that either the idea is too obvious to be patented, which is a hard sell, or you must show that someone else thought of it first.” Denicola pointed out that most plants decay quickly after being picked, so producing prior art in the form of a 2-year-old bushel of corn would be next to impossible.


As legal challenges are formulated, Monsanto has gone ahead and begun to assess licensing fees for farmers in the U.S. and Europe who are using its technology, which includes every farm that grows crops from the ground rather than thin air or hydroponics.


For crops, Grant said, “The licensing fee will be the extremely reasonable price of the market value of your crops on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange at harvest time.” Added Grant, “Plus interest.”