What's the deal with the RR soy patent?

I had an interesting conversation with Mike McGuire, the director of Monsanto’s Canadian corn and soybean seed trait business last week. The talk stemmed from some coffee shop talk recently that saw farmers getting excited about the impending end of Monsanto’s patent on its initial RR soybean trait. In other words, farmers were wondering when they’d be able to grow RoundupReady beans without having to sign a technology use agreement and then be able to plant bin run seed.
Let’s first get the timeline straight. The patent runs out in August of 2011. That means, for the 2010 and 2011 growing season it will be business as usual. In other words, Roundup Ready soybean seed bought for the 2011 season will still fall under patent protection and the technology use agreement. You can’t keep back that seed and plant it in 2012. “The agreement will still be in effect,” McGuire confirms.
Starting with the 2012 season the technology is fair game for other seed companies and for growers.
But McGuire isn’t losing any sleep over the issue. He knows all patents have a lifespan that eventually comes to an end. He says if he worried about that fact he wouldn’t be doing his company and growers any good.
Instead he’s concentrating on new technology – the Genuity RR2Yield varieties. The way McGuire sees it: by the time the initial patent runs out, these new beans will be so far ahead of the originals that no one with an eye on the bottom line will even think about the old RR beans or planting them bin-run.
I’m sure growers will be watching the variety plots over the next couple of years and doing their own calculations. As we’ve learned many times: just because something is suddenly cheaper doesn’t always mean it’s the best deal.