WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that farmers could not use Monsanto’s patented genetically altered soybeans to create new seeds without paying the company a fee. 
 
 The ruling has implications for many aspects of modern agriculture and for businesses based on vaccines, cell lines and software. But Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, emphasized that the decision was narrow. 
 
 “Our holding today is limited — addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a self-replicating product,” she wrote. “We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex and diverse. In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose.” 
 
 But Justice Kagan had little difficulty ruling that an Indiana farmer’s conduct in the case before the court, Bowman v. Monsanto Company, No. 11-796, had run afoul of patent law. 
 
 Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented seeds must generally sign a contract promising not to save seeds from the resulting crop, which means they must buy new seeds every year. The seeds are valuable because they are resistant to the herbicide Roundup, itself a Monsanto product. 
 
 But the Indiana farmer, Vernon Hugh Bowman, who had signed such contracts for his main crop, said he discovered a loophole for a second, riskier crop later in the growing season. 
 
 For that second crop, he bought seeds from a grain elevator filled with a mix of seeds in the reasonable hope that many of them contained Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready gene. 
 
 Seeds from grain elevators are typically sold for animal feed, food processing or industrial uses. But Mr. Bowman planted them and sprayed them with Roundup. Many plants survived, and he replanted their seeds. 
 
 Monsanto sued, and a federal judge in Indiana ordered Mr. Bowman to pay the company more than $84,000. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent cases, upheld that decision, saying that by planting the seeds Mr. Bowman had infringed Monsanto’s patents. 
 
 Justice Kagan agreed, suggesting that Mr. Bowman had been too clever for his own good. 
 
 Mr. Bowman’s main argument was that a doctrine called patent exhaustion allowed him to do what he liked with products he had obtained legally. But Justice Kagan said it did not apply to the way he had used the seeds. 
 
 “Under the patent exhaustion doctrine, Bowman could resell the patented soybeans he purchased from the grain elevator; so too he could consume the beans himself or feed them to his animals,” she wrote. 
 
 “But the exhaustion doctrine does not enable Bowman to make additional patented soybeans without Monsanto’s permission,” she added, and went on to say that “that is precisely what Bowman did.” 
 
 Justice Kagan said that allowing Mr. Bowman’s tactic would destroy the value of Monsanto’s patent. “The exhaustion doctrine is limited to the ‘particular item’ sold,” she wrote, “to avoid just such a mismatch between invention and reward.” 
 
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 Mr. Bowman acknowledged the general principle that he had no right to make a new product with Monsanto’s seeds. But he said he had used the seeds precisely as they were intended to be used — planting them “in the normal way farmers do,” Justice Kagan wrote. 
 
 Accepting that theory, she wrote, would create an “unprecedented exception” to the exhaustion doctrine. “If simple copying were a protected use,” she wrote, “a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the item containing the invention.” 
 
 Mr. Bowman also argued in briefs that soybeans naturally “self-replicate or ‘sprout’ unless stored in a controlled manner,” meaning that “it was the planted soybean, not Bowman,” that created the new seeds. 
 
 Justice Kagan rejected what she called “that blame-the-bean defense.” 
 
 “Bowman was not a passive observer of his soybeans’ multiplication,” she wrote, adding: “Put another way, the seeds he purchased (miraculous though they might be in other respects) did not spontaneously create eight successive soybean crops.” 
 
 “It was Bowman, and not the bean,” she wrote, “who controlled the reproduction (unto the eighth generation) of Monsanto’s patented invention.” ||||| Indiana farmer's effort to replicate soybeans that are resistant to weed killer is determined to be a patent infringement. 
 
 The entrance to the Monsanto Company, headquartered in St. Louis, is seen in 2005. (Photo: James A. Finley, AP) Story Highlights Unanimous ruling protects biotechnology entrepreneurs from predators 
 
 Justices gave little credence to Indiana farmer's argument 
 
 Ruling does not settle all future cases involving self-replicating products 
 
 WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court usually isn't friendly toward questionable patents, but it came down overwhelmingly on the side of agribusiness giant Monsanto Monday in a case that's bound to resonate throughout the biotechnology industry. 
 
 The court ruled unanimously that an Indiana farmer violated Monsanto's patent on genetically modified soybeans when he culled some from a grain elevator and used them to replant his own crop in future years. 
 
 "If simple copying were a protected use, a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the invention," Justice Elena Kagan ruled in a short 10-page opinion. "The undiluted patent monopoly, it might be said, would extend not for 20 years as the Patent Act promises, but for only one transaction. And that would result in less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted." 
 
 Who it helps: Inventors and entrepreneurs who have patents on products that can be self-replicated, from computer software to cell lines. While Kagan's decision is limited to the Monsanto case, it bolsters the argument that self-replicating products can be protected from patent infringement even if their challengers go through third parties. 
 
 Who it hurts: Consumers paying high prices. The Center for Food Safety released a report in February that showed three corporations control much of the global commercial seed market. It found that from 1995-2011, the average cost to plant 1 acre of soybeans rose 325%. 
 
 What's to come: Still pending is a decision on whether human genes can be patented. That case tests a company's patent on the genes that can identify an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. During oral arguments in April, the justices seemed far more skeptical of the merits of that patent. 
 
 Monsanto's soybeans represent the cream of the crop because they are resistant to the weed killer Roundup. Farmers must pay Monsanto's price to plant the beans themselves. 
 
 That's not what Indiana farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman did. After one year of going through Monsanto, he bought his second crop from a grain elevator. Then he used his own soybeans that resisted Roundup in future years -- in essence, the court said, making copies of a patented invention. 
 
 Bowman's attorney, Mark Walters, had argued that the Monsanto seeds were acquired innocently enough from the grain elevator, and that Bowman's little operation never would threaten the company's monopoly. 
 
 Two lower federal courts weren't impressed with Bowman's case, ruling in favor of Monsanto. And that argument carried little weight with the justices when the case was argued in February. They noted that Monsanto had spent hundreds of millions of dollars over more than a decade to perfect its soybeans -- something it would not have done if others could so easily replicate them. 
 
 Bowman contended the soybeans were "self-replicating," but Kagan said that "blame-the-bean defense" wasn't worthy. 
 
 "Bowman was not a passive observer of his soybeans' multiplication," she said. "Or, put another way, the seeds he purchased, miraculous though they might be in other respects, did not spontaneously create eight successive soybean crops. 
 
 "It was Bowman, and not the bean, who controlled the reproduction (unto the eighth generation) of Monsanto's patented invention," Kagan said. 
 
 Monsanto officials applauded the decision, not just for the company but for innovators of all shapes and sizes. 
 
 "The court's ruling today ensures that longstanding principles of patent law apply to breakthrough 21st century technologies that are central to meeting the growing demands of our planet and its people," said David F. Snively, the company's executive vice president. "The ruling also provides assurance to all inventors throughout the public and private sectors that they can and should continue to invest in innovation that feeds people, improves lives, creates jobs, and allows America to keep its competitive edge." 
 
 Jim Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said the ruling will benefit all forms of biotechnology, "as well as the patients, farmers and consumers who benefit from biotechnology's help in healing, feeding and fueling the world." 
 
 But Center for Food Safety executive director Andrew Kimbrell called the ruling a setback for farmers. "The court chose to protect Monsanto over farmers," he said. "The court's ruling is contrary to logic and to agronomics, because it improperly attributes seeds' reproduction to farmers, rather than nature." 
 
 Fordham University School of Law professor Mark Patterson noted the decision stops short of determining how self-reproducing inventions should be handled in all cases. 
 
 "Justice Kagan, in the last paragraph of the opinion, noted that 'such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse,'" Patterson said. "Either the court or Congress will have to address them again soon." 
 
 Follow @richardjwolf on Twitter. 
 
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– Sometimes Goliath beats David—or Vernon, as the case may be. Seventy-six-year-old farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman has lost his Supreme Court battle with Monsanto over his use of patented soybean seeds, the New York Times reports. The court upheld an $84,000 lawsuit brought against Bowman by the agribusiness giant for growing and saving its seeds without paying a fee. Bowman had obtained the seeds from a grain elevator intended for animal feed, and argued that a doctrine called "patent exhaustion" allowed him to do as he pleased with the grain once he had purchased it. This may be true if he wanted to eat the seeds, but Justice Elena Kagan ruled that it does not extend to growing more seeds and replanting them without paying Monsanto for their use. But this case was about more than a few soybeans. Other industries with self-replicating products—from biotechnology to software—were paying close attention to see if their patents would remain safe, USA Today reports. But Kagan warned the outcome of this one case did not necessarily assure their futures. "Our holding today is limited," she wrote. "We recognize that such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. In another case, the article's self-replication might occur outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary but incidental step in using the item for another purpose."