Mycogen Plant Science, Inc. v. Monsanto Company

Appealed from: United States District Court for the Southern District of California. Judge Napoleon A. Jones, Jr.

Mycogen Plant Science, Inc., and its licensee, Agrigenetics, Inc., (collectively “Mycogen”) filed suit against the Monsanto Company in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, charging Monsanto with infringing Mycogen’s U.S. Patent No. 5,380,831 (the ’831 patent). On Monsanto’s motions for summary judgment, the district court ruled, inter alia, that the process claims of the ’831 patent are invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 102(g); that Monsanto could not have infringed Mycogen’s process claims under 35 U.S.C. § 271(g) based on any process Monsanto performed before the ’831 patent issued; and that prosecution history estoppel barred application of the doctrine of equivalents to the product claims of the ’831 patent. On appeal, Mycogen argues that each of those rulings is wrong. For its part, Monsanto argues that the judgment of invalidity can be affirmed on the alternative ground of lack of enablement under 35 U.S.C. § 112, paragraph 1.