A few thoughts on this case:

The farmer here knew of Monsanto's license by which you could buy their genetically-altered (patented) seeds for the purpose of planting one crop only and selling that crop, with the need each year to buy more of the patented seeds from Monsanto directly or from one of its authorized resellers and with a specific prohibition on any form of replanting. Each year, he routinely bought these seeds and planted them in accordance with the license restrictions for his primary crop. For his secondary crop each year for eight years running, though, he bought seeds generically on resale from a grain elevator, planted them in a such a way as to isolate which parts of the resulting crop were from the Monsanto seeds, and, through a continual culling process, regularly wound up planting these Monsanto seeds for an 8-year period so as to get the benefits of the patented seeds without having to buy them from Monsanto or a Monsanto dealer. When he got sued over this, he argued that the "bean did it" by claiming that he did not himself "make" or "create" an infringing product so as to infringe Monsanto's patent but rather forces of nature over which he had no control created the new product, thereby absolving him for any responsibility for infringement.

People often mock the law for its occasional absurdities and for its bone-crushing processes, and rightly so. But most U.S. law at its core is grounded in sound principles that make a lot of sense, and the case here represents one such instance.

Granting the premise of patent laws that an inventor is to have monopoly protection for a prescribed period in order to profit from his invention, it makes perfect sense that the patent exhaustion doctrine should not be interpreted such that, after but a single sale of the product that benefits the patent holder, others can simply make copies of the product for sale or use directly and without compensating the patent holder in any way. Now, some may support such an outcome in the name of sticking a thumb in the eye of patent holders but, given that U.S. courts do not have a mission to subvert the patent laws and instead seek to uphold them as the law of the land, those courts cannot really abide such a result. Instead, they will say that the farmer's argument here that the "bean did it" is pure sophistry and a way of subverting the plain purpose of the law. That is exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court did here. And that is why it was unanimous. By legal standards, it really was not a close call.

In the words of the Court: "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."

All that said, the court was very careful to note that its ruling does not in any way apply to all forms of self-replicating 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." Thus, the ruling was not a knee-jerk upholding of maximum protection for the patent laws. The court seems more than ready to keep an open mind when it comes to changing technology. It simply was not ready to give sanction to a clever interpretation of law that would have undercut the very fundamentals of why the law existed in the first place.