WILMINGTON, Del. - The DuPont Co. has, according to this story, taken aim at rival Monsanto Co.'s shares of the U.S. cotton, soybean seed and herbicide markets by filing two federal lawsuits, both alleging antitrust violations and one adding allegations of theft of trade secrets.

The story says that in the Delaware U.S. District Court, DuPont sought a jury trial on its antitrust claims and an award of unspecified triple damages. In the soybean case, DuPont also asked that it be awarded all profits Monsanto earned as a result of its alleged "misappropriation" of DuPont trade secrets.

DuPont alleged that Monsanto induced a subsidiary to provide it with DuPont's proprietary molecular breeding technology used to grow a better variety of plants and get them to market sooner.

The story adds that beginning in 1988, DuPont exchanged this genetic marker technology with Michigan-based Asgrow Seed Co. LLC. The result was a soybean seed resistant to DuPont's sulfonylurea class of herbicides (SU). DuPont expected demand for its sulfonylurea herbicides would increase as sales of sulfonylurea-tolerant soybean seeds, or STS, increased.

Monsanto acquired Asgrow in 1997 and, according to court papers, used DuPont's technology "to expedite and advance" Monsanto's development of a competing product, Roundup Ready soybeans which are resistant to Monsanto's Roundup, the world's largest selling herbicide, the lawsuit says.

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