Monsanto Steps Up Efforts To Extend Weedkiller’s Life Company’s Patent On Roundup Will Expire Four Years From Now

In four years Monsanto Co. will lose its U.S. patent on Roundup, the world’s largest-selling weedkiller. But the company is taking steps to make sure the herbicide won’t be weeded out by the competition.

Like many other companies faced with the prospective loss of a valuable legal monopoly, the chemical and biotech giant has been thinking ahead, improving the original version, combining it with other ingredients and creating a network of retailers, distributors and other business partners designed to protect its market stronghold.

Roundup is the world’s largest-selling agricultural chemical, a modern marketing wonder that one analyst estimates accounts for 15 percent to 17 percent of Monsanto’s total sales of $9 billion.

One key to the post-patent strategy is that Monsanto is not only selling the product, it is selling its ability to help growers move into the future.

“You’re really talking about the transfer of knowledge, as opposed to just buying a product,” said Arnold W. Donald, president of Monsanto’s Crop Protection Unit. “Most of the market is established on relationships and knowledge transfer. Products come and go, but those relationships last.”

Roundup is what’s known as a “non-selective” herbicide - which means it kills anything green. Relatively benign environmentally, it is absorbed by weeds’ leaves and spreads through their roots, but it breaks down quickly in soil and doesn’t appear to accumulate in plant or animal tissue. First introduced in 1974, Roundup was initially designed to be used to eliminate weeds after crops were planted, but before crops emerged.

In the past 10 years the company has marketed it as an alternative to plowing, which means less topsoil and moisture lost during planting. The use of Roundup permits what Monsanto has promoted as “conservation tillage,” which is particularly valuable where land suitable for cultivation is in short supply. The result has been double-digit rates of growth over the past 10 years.

Now Monsanto is beginning to offer genetically engineered seed for major crops - “Roundup Ready” plants from seed protected by patents that will outlive Roundup’s. The seed is engineered to produce plants with immunity to the weedkiller.

In January, Monsanto introduced Roundup Ultra, a product made more effective by combination with agents that will be protected as trade secrets after Roundup’s patent protection expires.