Corteva Lawsuit Says Startup Stole Seed-Gene Technology.

"One of the world's biggest agriculture companies is accusing a startup of scheming to steal high-tech crop seeds.

Corteva, the agriculture behemoth spun out of DowDuPont in 2019, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Delaware, accusing the seed-gene-editing company Inari Agriculture of illicitly obtaining Corteva seeds from a U.S. depository and illegally shipping them to Europe. Corteva alleges that the startup made small changes to the plants' genetics and now is seeking to patent the seeds in the U.S.

"Theft of proprietary technology hurts not only our company but also, ultimately, our nation's farmers," said Corteva's chief technology officer, Sam Eathington, in a statement.

Inari declined to comment.

Seeds are at the root of the global agriculture industry, generating tens of billions of dollars in sales. The world's largest crop-seed developers -- including Corteva, Bayer and Syngenta -- are investing in the potential of gene-editing technology in crops, which enables scientists to make precise changes to plants' existing DNA.

For decades genetic modification, which is different from gene editing, in agriculture has largely involved inserting outside genes into profitable crop varieties and has helped create seeds modified to resist certain herbicides.

The agriculture industry has spent billions of dollars in recent years competing to develop new technology for editing the genes of plants that they hope will yield highly lucrative enhanced crops.

Founded in 2016, privately held Massachusetts-based Inari was valued at about $1.5 billion last year and has said its focus is designing new varieties of corn, soybeans and wheat that are more resilient to the effects of climate change and less stressful to the environment.

Many of its top executives include former officials at seed companies like Syngenta and Bayer.

Rather than breed new seeds like Corteva does, Inari partners with seed makers to use its gene-editing technology to enhance their products. Corteva, a top supplier to Iowa soybean growers, Brazilian corn operations and other farmers around the world, says in its lawsuit that it has never partnered with Inari and has no agreement for the startup to modify any of its seeds.

Corteva claims Inari began taking its technology in 2020 through a nonprofit depository of seeds called the American Type Culture Collection that makes them available for research." [1]

1. Corteva Lawsuit Says Startup Stole Seed-Gene Technology. Thomas, Patrick.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 28 Sep 2023: B.4.