In the year 2015 the Monsanto Co. patent on the Roundup Ready soybean will expire. The problem is that, at least for now, no one really knows what that means.

Ray Gaesser, an Iowa soybean and corn farmer and vice president of the American Soybean Association, says that the primary issue being related to his organization by producers, seed companies and academic institutions is, “Who will be in charge?”

Monsanto, according to spokesperson Jim Tobin, is willing to relieve at least a portion of the uncertainty by partially purchasing international agreements related to the Roundup Ready trait for three years following the expiration of the patent.

“We need to make sure that when a farmer produces that crop, it has a market,” Tobin said. The cost of the agreements, Tobin said, are between $1 and $2 million per year, and his company would be willing to enter into contracts with other companies that want to begin their own research and development with the trait.

But while Tobin and Gaesser addressed the uncertainty of the change, Diana Moss, vice president and senior fellow at the American Antitrust Instititute was visibly excited about the opportunity being presented.

“With Roundup Ready going off patent, this will really be the first opportunity to have competition in the biotech seed industry,” she said. “This has been proprietary technology, but once the patent expires the window starts to open — and, actually, I would argue that the window should start to open now because we need to start that pipeline beforehand.”

If no regulations or policies are developed to smooth the transition of the product from proprietary to generic, there could potentially be a gap.

“I don’t believe a legislative solution, like Hatch-Waxman, will work fast enough,” she said and suggested that a possible solution would be the development of a biotech seed organization — an agency that would function similarly to the Generic Pharmaceutical Organization.

“There is an urgency about this,” said Dermot Hayes, professor of economics and finance, Pioneer Chair in Agribusiness at Iowa State University. “If anything good comes out of this conference, it will be this third party institution.”

What’s adding to the urgency of the issue, Gaesser said, isn’t just the patent expiration for the widely adopted Roundup Ready soybean, but the fact that the one expiration is only the beginning.

“[Monsanto] believe[s] there should be a lot of people at the table when this comes around,” said Tobin.