Monsanto says both suits are frivolous and accuses Syngenta of inappropriately exploiting Monsanto technology.
The knock against Monsanto's technology was the use of foreign genes, something that Peribere says zinc fingers can avoid.
Its U.S. brand, NK, licensed an herbicide-tolerant technology for soybeans from Monsanto.
Monsanto is a global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products for growers and downstream customers, such as grain processors and consumers, in the agricultural markets.
Therein lies the origin of university science departments, regional agglomerations such as Silicon Valley and Route 128, and mega-laboratories at leading high-technology firms including Merck, Microsoft and Monsanto.
Bowman is one of more than a hundred farmers sued by Monsanto in recent years over unauthorized use of its seed technology.
MSN: Food safety group calls for court to limit GMO seed patents
But Monsanto, claiming it had developed the herbicide-tolerant technology, retaliated.
"We continue to believe that investor anxiety on Monsanto is misplaced as the company is not a cyclical stock but a technology growth machine that should keep rolling in 2009 and beyond, fueled by strong current product demand as well as an unrivaled pipeline, " said Robert Koort, an analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Also the ETC (an action group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration)--the same group that had lobbied against Monsanto 's (nyse: MON - news - people ) genetically engineered crops in the 1990s--has called for nothing less than a moratorium on the use of synthetic nanoparticles in the lab and in commercial products.
One worry is that the new science of synthetic biology, the souped-up form of genetic engineering that involves radically modifying organisms or even someday designing them from scratch, is both more promising and more dangerous that the technology that has been around for two decades and gave birth to Amgen, Genencor, and Monsanto.
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