Most people associate California with the beach and Hollywood. However, California is more than just a state with vacation spots and pop-culture. In fact, California is an agricultural giant, leading the country in farm income. The state grows over 200 crops, some of which are grown solely in California.
One of the highest grossing crops in the state is strawberries. As the fifth most valuable crop in the state, the small red fruit brings in an estimated $2.5 billion a year in California alone. The University of California Davis plays an important role in this revenue stream. Having patented fifty-six unique strawberry varieties since 1945, researchers at UC Davis have helped shape what is now the modern-day strawberry, developing strawberry strains that are larger, taste better, stay fresh longer, and yield six times more per acre. More than 80% of the strawberries grown in North America, and more than 60% worldwide, are UC Davis varieties.
Recently, multiple UC Davis strawberry patents were the center of a patent infringement suit brought in a San Francisco federal court. The University brought suit against two former employees alleging the former employees were infringing multiple UC Davis strawberry patents.
Defendants Douglas Shaw and Kirk Larson ran the UC Davis strawberry breeding program for twenty-two years until they retired in 2014. Before retiring, Shaw and Larson informed UC Davis they planned to form a private strawberry breeding company and sought a license from the University which would allow them to use UC Davis strawberries in their new business. The University rejected their proposal.
Despite the University’s rejection, Shaw and Larson proceeded to form the California Berry Cultivars (CBC) and to use UC Davis’ patented strawberries. Litigation ensued. UC Davis accused its former employees of violating their “duties of loyalty” to the university by taking some of the UC Davis plants to Spain, cross-breeding them, and bringing them back to California for commercial use. The University’s lawsuit, filed in 2016, claimed Shaw and Larson violated nine of their most successful strawberry patents.
During the trial, Stephen Dellaporta, a professor in Yale’s molecular, cellular, and developmental biology department, testified that CBC’s seedlings contained genetic material from five University-patented varieties that hadn’t been released at the time they were bred. Dellaporta further testified that nineteen unique varieties had never been released. Shaw acknowledged that some of CBC’s strawberry plants were bred from University-owned plants that had not been released commercially.
UC Davis further claimed that, in 2010, Shaw and Larson began sending varieties from its strawberry program to EuroSemillas, a Spanish company. Under prior agreements between UC Davis and EuroSemillas, University strawberry plants could be tested in Spain before going to market, but could not be used for breeding. However, the University claimed EuroSemillas harvested patented strawberry seeds in Spain and sent the seeds to CBC in United States for use, in violation of their agreements. The University claimed CBC and EuroSemillas bred the seeds in Spain and imported them into the US in an attempt to circumvent US patent laws.
After a five-day trial, the jury unanimously decided the two former researchers willfully infringed the University’s patented multi-million-dollar strawberry plants. The jury also found that the researchers used UC Davis’ un-patented plants without permission to breed strawberries through a private company that would have competed with the University.
In a prepared statement, Helene Dillard, Dean of UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, said “[t]he federal jury decision is good news for public strawberry breeding at UC Davis and all strawberry farmers throughout California and the world. Our revitalized public strawberry breeding program will continue to develop affordable, high-quality varieties and train the next generation of breeders to serve every strawberry farmer, shipper, processor, and consumer.”
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