It was found that many of his soybean crop was indeed carrying the roundup resistant traits and therefore was breaching the Monsanto's Patent. (case brief) Bowman stated that he had been purchasing seeds from a grain elevator and believed that he had been planting the seeds legally due to it being a commodity grain without restriction. He believed this because he had been buying seeds from a communal grain elevator hoping that they were in fact roundup resistant seeds and admitted to saving some of the beans for seed.
A GMO is an organism that has been altered to implant more favorable traits into the species of plant. There are a few methods to make these GMOs. (UCSD) The oldest one is to find plants with the favorable genes and continue to breed them with only the plants with that favorable gene until it is now in all of the plants. However with the new technology we have been able to come up with new ways of producing these more desirable plants. (UCSD) This new technology is applied in a laboratory where the desirable traits are able to be picked out and transferred into the new plant to enhance the new plant. (UCSD)Typical traits that are transferred are herbicide and/or insect resistant plants. .
Whenever a first time buyer purchases seeds like the ones in question from the Monsanto Company they must sign a stewardship agreement which states that the buyer is not allowed to save or harvest seeds from their crop this year. (newsviews)If they intend to use the seeds the next season the farmer must purchase all new seeds from a licensed seed company or risk breaking the stewardship agreement. In this case the petitioner, Bowman, purchased a set of the roundup resistant seeds from a licensed seller of the GM seeds, Pioneer Hi-Bred international. He then proceeded to use the seeds from a commodity grain elevator which contained a majority of the roundup resistant seeds. (court case).