法官意見：

Judge Sippel allowed the antitrust portion of the case to proceed,
possibly setting the stage for a court battle over whether the world's
biggest producers of agricultural seeds got together in the late 1990's to
fix prices and control the market for those valuable biotechnology seeds,
which are now planted on more than 100 million acres worldwide.

Judge Sippel denied an effort by the big seed companies to dismiss the
antitrust claims and end the possibility of a trial.
　

業者及律師意見：

Richard Lewis, a lawyer at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, which filed the
class-action suit in 1999, said today, "The farmers are pleased that this
challenge to the progress of the case has been defeated."

But executives at Monsanto, which is based in St. Louis, said the judge's
ruling significantly narrowed the scope of the case, and that if the judge
denied the class-action status, the case would be even further diminished.

Monsanto executives say most of the original claims -- including those that
said even farmers who used conventional seeds were harmed by biotechnology
crops -- have been dismissed.

"The broad claims have been so significantly narrowed, so it's clear that
what they were charging about biotech is not true," a spokesman for
Monsanto, Bryan Hurley, said. "This is absolutely an interim step and if it
moves forward we believe it's a case without merit and we're confident the
court will recognize that."

"We don't think the case has any merit," said Doyle Karr, a spokesman at
Pioneer Hi-Bred, a subsidiary of DuPont.

"We don't believe the claim against Bayer is valid," said Mark Ryan, a Bayer
spokesman. "We'll defend ourself vigorously in court against that claim."

學者意見：

"The judge is saying this antitrust case can go forward," said Robert
Mnookin, a professor at the Harvard Law School. "He's refusing to throw out
the antitrust case because there's a material dispute of fact over whether
Monsanto and these other companies conspired to fix prices."