Corteva, Inari settle lawsuit over seed patent dispute

(Adobe Stock)

Indianapolis-based agricultural giant Corteva Inc. has settled a lawsuit in which it accused rival startup Inari Agriculture Inc. of taking Corteva’s patent-protected seeds, making slight genetic modifications and preparing to commercialize them under its own name.

The companies announced the settlement on Monday, five days after a trial began in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

Corteva and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Inari asked the court on Sunday to dismiss the case with prejudice, which means it cannot be refiled, according to court documents.

As part of the settlement, Inari agreed to destroy all Corteva material it accessed from seed depositories and material it developed from the deposits. Corteva will receive the intellectual property related to the edited versions. Corteva and Inari also agreed to negotiate certain licensing arrangements. Other terms of the settlement are confidential.

“Global patent and plant variety protection systems that protect agricultural innovation help promote continued investment, competition and collaboration in the development of improved seed products that benefit farmers,” a statement from Corteva and Inari said.

“Patent depositories and their procedures on access to biological material serve an important function as part of these systems. The rulings in this case reinforce applicable rights with respect to seed deposits. Corteva and Inari agree that it is important to abide by applicable patent and other laws and contracts relating to deposited materials.”

Corteva sued Inari in September 2023, alleging the company improperly obtained Corteva’s patented seeds, made slight genetic modifications and sought to commercialize them. The lawsuit also claimed Inari improperly used a third-party repository to access protected materials.

Inari, which also has locations in West Lafayette at Purdue Research Park and in Ghent, Belgium, argued that the seeds were made publicly available without restriction as part of the patent process.

Corteva said one way Inari misappropriated seeds was by misusing seed deposits at the American Type Culture Collection, or ATCC, a not-for-profit organization that collects, stores and distributes standard reference microorganisms, cell lines, seeds and other biologic materials for research purposes.

Corteva said it made those deposits in connection with filing applications to obtain patents covering the protected seeds. The collection organization made the protected seeds available for public inspection but expressly prohibited members of the public from using those seeds for commercial purposes, from transferring them outside their organization,” the 2023 complaint said.

Despite the prohibitions, the complaint said Corteva learned in December 2022 that Inari had illegally obtained hundreds of varieties of Corteva’s protected seeds from ATCC and exported them to Belgium for commercial purposes without Corteva’s knowledge or approval.

Corteva is preparing for a planned split of its crop protection business, which will retain the Corteva name, and its seed business, which will operate as Vylor Inc. The split is scheduled to be completed Friday.

Corteva will remain headquartered in Indianapolis, while Vylor will be based at Corteva’s existing campus in Johnston, Iowa. Corteva has roughly 3,000 employees in Iowa, according to a report by Iowa-based farm economic group America’s Cultivation Corridor.

About 2,000 of Corteva’s 22,000-plus employees are based in Indiana, including about 1,500 at its Zionsville Road headquarters, just south of the junction of Interstates 465 and I-865 on the city’s northwest side. The company plans to maintain its current office location.

Corteva was spun off as a public company in 2019. It had previously operated as the agriculture division of DowDuPont, which itself had been formed in 2017 in a $62 billion merger between Dow Chemical and Old DuPont.