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Accused by Monsanto Co. of patent infringement, DuPont fired back on Tuesday, claiming its Creve Coeur-based rival initiated the case to stifle competition by keeping new biotech trait combinations out of the hands of farmers.

The response from DuPont comes just more than a month after Monsanto sued the company in federal court in St. Louis.

The Monsanto lawsuit claims DuPont’s agricultural unit, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., violated a license agreement by combining an herbicide resistance trait that it’s developing with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready trait.

In its answer, Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont challenged the validity of Monsanto’s patents and said the 2002 license agreement doesn’t prohibit it from combining the genetic traits.

DuPont says combining, or "stacking," genetic traits for herbicide tolerance would provide farmers with better weed control than Monsanto’s Roundup Ready technology can deliver by itself.

"We will vigorously defend our rights to bring valuable new technologies to the market," James C pay day loans. Borel, a DuPont vice president said in a statement.

Monsanto was the first company to develop a gene for herbicide resistance with its 1996 launch of Roundup Ready soybeans. Today, Pioneer and other seed companies pay Monsanto for the right to use the Roundup Ready trait.

DuPont says the technology is used in about 95 percent of soybean acres in U.S., and that Monsanto has used strict license agreements to exclude competition and raise prices to farmers.

Monsanto claims DuPont chose to combine the biotech traits in soybean seeds to "cover up" problems with a rival technology, Optimum GAT.

"DuPont’s filing today is yet another smoke screen to divert attention from its problem-plagued product," Scott Partridge, deputy general counsel for Monsanto, said in a statement.

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