They were the kind of emails that executives everywhere send dozens of times daily quick requests for information, written in an almost telegraphic style. The kind of emails that the writers probably forgot about immediately as they moved on to other matters. The kind of emails that no one expected would undergo word-by-word scrutiny in a lawsuit years later. But that’s exactly what happened with emails written by officials at E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and one of its subsidiaries that became key pieces of evidence in a patent infringement suit brought by Monsanto Company. The emails led to a blistering sanctions order against DuPont and a massive damages award for Monsanto, which in turn led to a $1.75 billion settlement between the two companies.
The emails focused on a 2002 agreement in which Monsanto granted a restricted license for some of its genetically modified soybean seed patents to the DuPont subsidiary, then known as Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. DuPont said it believed that the agreement permitted Pioneer to develop its own modified soybeans by "stacking," or combining, Pioneer’s gene traits with Monsanto’s traits. But Monsanto insisted that the license specifically banned stacking, and that officials at DuPont and Pioneer knew this, as shown by their emails.
