(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2012 1 

Syllabus 

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. 

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. ET AL. 

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR 

THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT 

No. 11–796. Argued February 19, 2013—Decided May 13, 2013 

Respondent Monsanto invented and patented Roundup Ready soybean

seeds, which contain a genetic alteration that allows them to survive

exposure to the herbicide glyphosate. It sells the seeds subject to a

licensing agreement that permits farmers to plant the purchased 

seed in one, and only one, growing season. Growers may consume or 

sell the resulting crops, but may not save any of the harvested soybeans for replanting. Petitioner Bowman purchased Roundup Ready

soybean seed for his first crop of each growing season from a company

associated with Monsanto and followed the terms of the licensing 

agreement. But to reduce costs for his riskier late-season planting,

Bowman purchased soybeans intended for consumption from a grain

elevator; planted them; treated the plants with glyphosate, killing all

plants without the Roundup Ready trait; harvested the resulting

soybeans that contained that trait; and saved some of these harvested seeds to use in his late-season planting the next season. After discovering this practice, Monsanto sued Bowman for patent infringement. Bowman raised the defense of patent exhaustion, which gives 

the purchaser of a patented article, or any subsequent owner, the

right to use or resell that article. The District Court rejected Bowman’s defense and the Federal Circuit affirmed. 

Held: Patent exhaustion does not permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder’s 

permission. Pp. 4–10.

(a) Under the patent exhaustion doctrine, “the initial authorized 

sale of a patented article terminates all patent rights to that item,” 

Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U. S. 617, 625, 

and confers on the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, “the right to 

use [or] sell” the thing as he sees fit, United States v. Univis Lens Co., 
 

2 BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. 

Syllabus 

316 U. S. 241, 249–250. However, the doctrine restricts the patentee’s rights only as to the “particular article” sold, id., at 251; it leaves 

untouched the patentee’s ability to prevent a buyer from making new 

copies of the patented item. By planting and harvesting Monsanto’s

patented seeds, Bowman made additional copies of Monsanto’s patented invention, and his conduct thus falls outside the protections of

patent exhaustion. Were this otherwise, Monsanto’s patent would 

provide scant benefit. After Monsanto sold its first seed, other seed 

companies could produce the patented seed to compete with Monsanto, and farmers would need to buy seed only once. Pp. 4–7.

(b) Bowman argues that exhaustion should apply here because he 

is using seeds in the normal way farmers do, and thus allowing Monsanto to interfere with that use would create an impermissible exception to the exhaustion doctrine for patented seeds. But it is really

Bowman who is asking for an exception to the well-settled rule that

exhaustion does not extend to the right to make new copies of the patented item. If Bowman was granted that exception, patents on

seeds would retain little value. Further, applying the normal rule

will allow farmers to make effective use of patented seeds. Bowman, 

who purchased seeds intended for consumption, stands in a peculiarly poor position to argue that he cannot make effective use of his soybeans. Bowman conceded that he knew of no other farmer who 

planted soybeans bought from a grain elevator. In the more ordinary 

case, when a farmer purchases Roundup Ready seed from Monsanto 

or an affiliate, he will be able to plant it in accordance with Monsanto’s license to make one crop. Pp. 7–10. 

657 F. 3d 1341, affirmed. 

KAGAN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. 
 

 

_________________ 

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Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 11–796 

VERNON HUGH BOWMAN, PETITIONER v. 

MONSANTO COMPANY ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT
 

[May 13, 2013] 

JUSTICE KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court. 

Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion, the authorized

sale of a patented article gives the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, a right to use or resell that article. Such a 

sale, however, does not allow the purchaser to make new 

copies of the patented invention. The question in this case

is whether a farmer who buys patented seeds may reproduce them through planting and harvesting without the

patent holder’s permission. We hold that he may not. 

I 

Respondent Monsanto invented a genetic modification

that enables soybean plants to survive exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in many herbicides (including 

Monsanto’s own Roundup). Monsanto markets soybean seed

containing this altered genetic material as Roundup Ready 

seed. Farmers planting that seed can use a glyphosatebased herbicide to kill weeds without damaging their crops. 

Two patents issued to Monsanto cover various aspects 

of its Roundup Ready technology, including a seed incorporating the genetic alteration. See Supp. App. SA1–21

(U. S. Patent Nos. 5,352,605 and RE39,247E); see also 
 

 

 

 

 

2 BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. 

Opinion of the Court 

657 F. 3d 1341, 1343–1344 (CA Fed. 2011). 

Monsanto sells, and allows other companies to sell,

Roundup Ready soybean seeds to growers who assent to a 

special licensing agreement. See App. 27a. That agreement permits a grower to plant the purchased seeds in one

(and only one) season. He can then consume the resulting 

crop or sell it as a commodity, usually to a grain elevator

or agricultural processor. See 657 F. 3d, at 1344–1345. 

But under the agreement, the farmer may not save any of 

the harvested soybeans for replanting, nor may he supply 

them to anyone else for that purpose. These restrictions 

reflect the ease of producing new generations of Roundup

Ready seed. Because glyphosate resistance comes from

the seed’s genetic material, that trait is passed on from

the planted seed to the harvested soybeans: Indeed, a

single Roundup Ready seed can grow a plant containing 

dozens of genetically identical beans, each of which, if

replanted, can grow another such plant—and so on and so 

on. See App. 100a. The agreement’s terms prevent the

farmer from co-opting that process to produce his own 

Roundup Ready seeds, forcing him instead to buy from

Monsanto each season. 

Petitioner Vernon Bowman is a farmer in Indiana who, 

it is fair to say, appreciates Roundup Ready soybean seed.

He purchased Roundup Ready each year, from a company 

affiliated with Monsanto, for his first crop of the season. 

In accord with the agreement just described, he used all of

that seed for planting, and sold his entire crop to a grain

elevator (which typically would resell it to an agricultural

processor for human or animal consumption). 

Bowman, however, devised a less orthodox approach for 

his second crop of each season. Because he thought such

late-season planting “risky,” he did not want to pay the 

premium price that Monsanto charges for Roundup Ready

seed. Id., at 78a; see Brief for Petitioner 6. He therefore 

went to a grain elevator; purchased “commodity soybeans” 
Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

intended for human or animal consumption; and planted

them in his fields.1 Those soybeans came from prior harvests of other local farmers. And because most of those 

farmers also used Roundup Ready seed, Bowman could

anticipate that many of the purchased soybeans would

contain Monsanto’s patented technology. When he applied

a glyphosate-based herbicide to his fields, he confirmed

that this was so; a significant proportion of the new plants

survived the treatment, and produced in their turn a new 

crop of soybeans with the Roundup Ready trait. Bowman 

saved seed from that crop to use in his late-season planting the next year—and then the next, and the next, until

he had harvested eight crops in that way. Each year, that 

is, he planted saved seed from the year before (sometimes

adding more soybeans bought from the grain elevator),

sprayed his fields with glyphosate to kill weeds (and any 

non-resistant plants), and produced a new crop of glyphosateresistant—i.e., Roundup Ready—soybeans.

After discovering this practice, Monsanto sued Bowman

for infringing its patents on Roundup Ready seed. Bowman raised patent exhaustion as a defense, arguing that

Monsanto could not control his use of the soybeans because they were the subject of a prior authorized sale

(from local farmers to the grain elevator). The District 

Court rejected that argument, and awarded damages to 

Monsanto of $84,456. The Federal Circuit affirmed. It 

reasoned that patent exhaustion did not protect Bowman

because he had “created a newly infringing article.” 657 

F. 3d, at 1348. The “right to use” a patented article follow-

—————— 

1Grain elevators, as indicated above, purchase grain from farmers

and sell it for consumption; under federal and state law, they generally 

cannot package or market their grain for use as agricultural seed. See 

7 U. S. C. §1571; Ind. Code §15–15–1–32 (2012). But because soybeans

are themselves seeds, nothing (except, as we shall see, the law) prevented Bowman from planting, rather than consuming, the product he

bought from the grain elevator. 
 

 

 

4 BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. 

Opinion of the Court 

ing an authorized sale, the court explained, “does not

include the right to construct an essentially new article on

the template of the original, for the right to make the

article remains with the patentee.” Ibid. (brackets and 

internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, Bowman

could not “‘replicate’ Monsanto’s patented technology by 

planting it in the ground to create newly infringing genetic 

material, seeds, and plants.” Ibid. 

We granted certiorari to consider the important question of patent law raised in this case, 568 U. S. ___ (2012), 

and now affirm. 

II 

The doctrine of patent exhaustion limits a patentee’s

right to control what others can do with an article embodying or containing an invention.2 Under the doctrine, “the 

initial authorized sale of a patented item terminates all 

patent rights to that item.” Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG 

Electronics, Inc., 553 U. S. 617, 625 (2008). And by “exhaust[ing] the [patentee’s] monopoly” in that item, the sale 

confers on the purchaser, or any subsequent owner, “the 

right to use [or] sell” the thing as he sees fit. United 

States v. Univis Lens Co., 316 U. S. 241, 249–250 (1942). 

We have explained the basis for the doctrine as follows:

“[T]he purpose of the patent law is fulfilled with respect to

any particular article when the patentee has received his 

reward . . . by the sale of the article”; once that “purpose is 

realized the patent law affords no basis for restraining the 

use and enjoyment of the thing sold.” Id., at 251. 

Consistent with that rationale, the doctrine restricts a 

patentee’s rights only as to the “particular article” sold, 

ibid.; it leaves untouched the patentee’s ability to prevent 

—————— 

2The Patent Act grants a patentee the “right to exclude others from 

making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention.” 35 U. S. C. 

§154(a)(1); see §271(a) (“[W]hoever without authority makes, uses,

offers to sell, or sells any patented invention . . . infringes the patent”). 
 

Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 5 

Opinion of the Court 

a buyer from making new copies of the patented item. 

“[T]he purchaser of the [patented] machine . . . does not 

acquire any right to construct another machine either for

his own use or to be vended to another.” Mitchell v. 

Hawley, 16 Wall. 544, 548 (1873); see Wilbur-Ellis Co. v. 

Kuther, 377 U. S. 422, 424 (1964) (holding that a purchaser’s “reconstruction” of a patented machine “would impinge on the patentee’s right ‘to exclude others from making’ . . . the article” (quoting 35 U. S. C. §154 (1964 ed.))).

Rather, “a second creation” of the patented item “call[s] 

the monopoly, conferred by the patent grant, into play for 

a second time.” Aro Mfg. Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 365 U. S. 336, 346 (1961). That is because the 

patent holder has “received his reward” only for the actual 

article sold, and not for subsequent recreations of it. 

Univis, 316 U. S., at 251. If the purchaser of that article 

could make and sell endless copies, the patent would 

effectively protect the invention for just a single sale. 

Bowman himself disputes none of this analysis as a general matter: He forthrightly acknowledges the “well settled” principle “that the exhaustion doctrine does not

extend to the right to ‘make’ a new product.” Brief for 

Petitioner 37 (citing Aro, 365 U. S., at 346).

Unfortunately for Bowman, that principle decides this 

case against him. Under the patent exhaustion doctrine,

Bowman could resell the patented soybeans he purchased 

from the grain elevator; so too he could consume the beans

himself or feed them to his animals. Monsanto, although

the patent holder, would have no business interfering in

those uses of Roundup Ready beans. But the exhaustion 

doctrine does not enable Bowman to make additional 

patented soybeans without Monsanto’s permission (either 

express or implied). And that is precisely what Bowman 

did. He took the soybeans he purchased home; planted 

them in his fields at the time he thought best; applied 

glyphosate to kill weeds (as well as any soy plants lacking 
 

 

6 BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. 

Opinion of the Court 

the Roundup Ready trait); and finally harvested more 

(many more) beans than he started with. That is how “to 

‘make’ a new product,” to use Bowman’s words, when the 

original product is a seed. Brief for Petitioner 37; see 

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1363 (1961) 

(“make” means “cause to exist, occur, or appear,” or more

specifically, “plant and raise (a crop)”). Because Bowman 

thus reproduced Monsanto’s patented invention, the exhaustion doctrine does not protect him.3 

Were the matter otherwise, Monsanto’s patent would

provide scant benefit. After inventing the Roundup Ready

trait, Monsanto would, to be sure, “receiv[e] [its] reward”

for the first seeds it sells. Univis, 316 U. S., at 251. But 

in short order, other seed companies could reproduce the

product and market it to growers, thus depriving Monsanto of its monopoly. And farmers themselves need only 

buy the seed once, whether from Monsanto, a competitor, 

or (as here) a grain elevator. The grower could multiply 

his initial purchase, and then multiply that new creation, 

ad infinitum—each time profiting from the patented seed 

without compensating its inventor. Bowman’s late-season 

plantings offer a prime illustration. After buying beans 

for a single harvest, Bowman saved enough seed each year 

to reduce or eliminate the need for additional purchases. 

—————— 

3This conclusion applies however Bowman acquired Roundup Ready

seed: The doctrine of patent exhaustion no more protected Bowman’s

reproduction of the seed he purchased for his first crop (from a Monsantoaffiliated seed company) than the beans he bought for his second 

(from a grain elevator). The difference between the two purchases was

that the first—but not the second—came with a license from Monsanto 

to plant the seed and then harvest and market one crop of beans. We 

do not here confront a case in which Monsanto (or an affiliated seed 

company) sold Roundup Ready to a farmer without an express license 

agreement. For reasons we explain below, we think that case unlikely 

to arise. See infra, at 9. And in the event it did, the farmer might 

reasonably claim that the sale came with an implied license to plant

and harvest one soybean crop. 
 

Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 7 

Opinion of the Court 

Monsanto still held its patent, but received no gain from 

Bowman’s annual production and sale of Roundup Ready 

soybeans. The exhaustion doctrine is limited to the “particular item” sold to avoid just such a mismatch between 

invention and reward. 

Our holding today also follows from J. E. M. Ag Supply, 

Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l, Inc., 534 U. S. 124 (2001). 

We considered there whether an inventor could get a

patent on a seed or plant, or only a certificate issued under 

the Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA), 7 U. S. C. §2321 

et seq. We decided a patent was available, rejecting the

claim that the PVPA implicitly repealed the Patent Act’s 

coverage of seeds and plants. On our view, the two statutes established different, but not conflicting schemes:

The requirements for getting a patent “are more stringent

than those for obtaining a PVP certificate, and the protections afforded” by a patent are correspondingly greater. 

J. E. M., 534 U. S., at 142. Most notable here, we explained that only a patent holder (not a certificate holder) 

could prohibit “[a] farmer who legally purchases and 

plants” a protected seed from saving harvested seed “for 

replanting.” Id., at 140; see id., at 143 (noting that the

Patent Act, unlike the PVPA, contains “no exemptio[n]” for 

“saving seed”). That statement is inconsistent with applying exhaustion to protect conduct like Bowman’s. If a sale 

cut off the right to control a patented seed’s progeny, then

(contrary to J. E. M.) the patentee could not prevent the

buyer from saving harvested seed. Indeed, the patentee

could not stop the buyer from selling such seed, which 

even a PVP certificate owner (who, recall, is supposed to

have fewer rights) can usually accomplish. See 7 U. S. C. 

§§2541, 2543. Those limitations would turn upside-down

the statutory scheme J. E. M. described. 

Bowman principally argues that exhaustion should

apply here because seeds are meant to be planted. The 

exhaustion doctrine, he reminds us, typically prevents a 
 

 

8 BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. 

Opinion of the Court 

patentee from controlling the use of a patented product

following an authorized sale. And in planting Roundup

Ready seeds, Bowman continues, he is merely using them

in the normal way farmers do. Bowman thus concludes 

that allowing Monsanto to interfere with that use would 

“creat[e] an impermissible exception to the exhaustion

doctrine” for patented seeds and other “self-replicating

technologies.” Brief for Petitioner 16. 

But it is really Bowman who is asking for an unprecedented exception—to what he concedes is the “well settled” 

rule that “the exhaustion doctrine does not extend to the 

right to ‘make’ a new product.” See supra, at 5. Reproducing a patented article no doubt “uses” it after a fashion.

But as already explained, we have always drawn the

boundaries of the exhaustion doctrine to exclude that 

activity, so that the patentee retains an undiminished

right to prohibit others from making the thing his patent 

protects. See, e.g., Cotton-Tie Co. v. Simmons, 106 U. S. 

89, 93–94 (1882) (holding that a purchaser could not “use” 

the buckle from a patented cotton-bale tie to “make” a new 

tie). That is because, once again, if simple copying were a

protected use, a patent would plummet in value after the 

first sale of the first item containing the invention. The 

undiluted patent monopoly, it might be said, would extend 

not for 20 years (as the Patent Act promises), but for only 

one transaction. And that would result in less incentive 

for innovation than Congress wanted. Hence our repeated

insistence that exhaustion applies only to the particular 

item sold, and not to reproductions.

Nor do we think that rule will prevent farmers from 

making appropriate use of the Roundup Ready seed they 

buy. Bowman himself stands in a peculiarly poor position 

to assert such a claim. As noted earlier, the commodity

soybeans he purchased were intended not for planting, but 

for consumption. See supra, at 2–3. Indeed, Bowman 

conceded in deposition testimony that he knew of no other 
Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 9 

Opinion of the Court 

farmer who employed beans bought from a grain elevator 

to grow a new crop. See App. 84a. So a non-replicating 

use of the commodity beans at issue here was not just 

available, but standard fare. And in the more ordinary 

case, when a farmer purchases Roundup Ready seed qua

seed—that is, seed intended to grow a crop—he will be 

able to plant it. Monsanto, to be sure, conditions the 

farmer’s ability to reproduce Roundup Ready; but it does

not—could not realistically—preclude all planting. No 

sane farmer, after all, would buy the product without

some ability to grow soybeans from it. And so Monsanto, 

predictably enough, sells Roundup Ready seed to farmers 

with a license to use it to make a crop. See supra, at 2, 6, 

n. 3. Applying our usual rule in this context therefore will

allow farmers to benefit from Roundup Ready, even as it 

rewards Monsanto for its innovation. 

Still, Bowman has another seeds-are-special argument: 

that soybeans naturally “self-replicate or ‘sprout’ unless

stored in a controlled manner,” and thus “it was the planted 

soybean, not Bowman” himself, that made replicas of 

Monsanto’s patented invention. Brief for Petitioner 42; 

see Tr. of Oral Arg. 14 (“[F]armers, when they plant seeds, 

they don’t exercise any control . . . over their crop” or “over 

the creative process”). But we think that blame-the-bean 

defense tough to credit. Bowman was not a passive observer of his soybeans’ multiplication; or put another way,

the seeds he purchased (miraculous though they might be

in other respects) did not spontaneously create eight successive soybean crops. As we have explained, supra at 

2–3, Bowman devised and executed a novel way to harvest

crops from Roundup Ready seeds without paying the usual

premium. He purchased beans from a grain elevator 

anticipating that many would be Roundup Ready; applied 

a glyphosate-based herbicide in a way that culled any 

plants without the patented trait; and saved beans from

the rest for the next season. He then planted those 
 

10 BOWMAN v. MONSANTO CO. 

Opinion of the Court 

Roundup Ready beans at a chosen time; tended and treated 

them, including by exploiting their patented glyphosateresistance; and harvested many more seeds, which he 

either marketed or saved to begin the next cycle. In all 

this, the bean surely figured. But it was Bowman, and not 

the bean, who controlled the reproduction (unto the eighth

generation) of Monsanto’s patented invention.

Our holding today is limited—addressing the situation before us, rather than every one involving a selfreplicating product. We recognize that such inventions

are becoming ever more prevalent, complex, and diverse. 

In another case, the article’s self-replication might occur

outside the purchaser’s control. Or it might be a necessary

but incidental step in using the item for another purpose. 

Cf. 17 U. S. C. §117(a)(1) (“[I]t is not [a copyright] infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program 

to make . . . another copy or adaptation of that computer

program provide[d] that such a new copy or adaptation is 

created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program”). We need not address here whether or 

how the doctrine of patent exhaustion would apply in such 

circumstances. In the case at hand, Bowman planted 

Monsanto’s patented soybeans solely to make and market

replicas of them, thus depriving the company of the reward patent law provides for the sale of each article. 

Patent exhaustion provides no haven for that conduct. We 

accordingly affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit. 

It is so ordered.