WILMINGTON, Del., and ST. LOUIS — DuPont and Monsanto have finalized technology licensing agreements to share the range of seed products offered farmers.
The agreements, announced March 26, include a multi-year, royalty-bearing license for Monsanto’s next-generation soybean technologies in the United States and Canada.
Through these agreements, DuPont Pioneer will be able to offer Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans as early as 2014, and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Xtend glyphosate and dicamba tolerant soybeans as early as 2015, pending regulatory approvals.
DuPont Pioneer also will receive regulatory data rights for the soybean and corn traits previously licensed from Monsanto, enabling it to create a wide array of stacked trait combinations using traits or genetics from DuPont Pioneer or others.
Monsanto will receive access to certain DuPont Pioneer disease resistance and corn defoliation patents.
Pioneer to pay royalties
Under these agreements, DuPont Pioneer will make a series of upfront and variable based royalty payments subject to future delivery of enabling soybean genetic material.
It will make four annual fixed royalty payments from 2014 to 2017 totaling $802 million for trait technology, associated data, and soybean lines to support commercial introduction.
Additionally, beginning in 2018, DuPont Pioneer will pay royalties on a per unit basis of Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Xtend for the life of the agreement for continued technology access, subject to annual minimum payments through 2023 totaling $950 million.
DuPont and Monsanto also agreed to dismiss their respective antitrust and first-generation Roundup Ready soybean patent lawsuits pending in U.S. federal court in St. Louis.
Additional terms of the agreements were not disclosed.
Goal: Boosting research
“This technology exchange helps both companies to expand the range of innovative solutions we can offer farmers, and to do so faster than either of us could alone,” said DuPont Pioneer President Paul E. Schickler.
Schickler reaffirmed DuPont’s existing financial growth commitments for its agriculture segment.
“We’ve always agreed that technological innovation and farmer choice are essential to agriculture, and this agreement endorses the value of our next-generation soybean technologies,” said Brett Begemann, Monsanto president and chief commercial officer.
