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. Who it helps: Inventors and entrepreneurs who have patents on products that can be self-replicated, from computer software to cell lines. "Justice Kagan, in the last paragraph of the opinion, noted that 'such inventions are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse,'" Patterson said. Monsanto's soybeans represent the cream of the crop because they are resistant to the weed killer Roundup. 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. Farmers must pay Monsanto's price to plant the beans themselves. "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. 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.”
– 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."