Patent Counseling and Prosecution – Agricultural Science

Cooley advised Graphyte on its $30 million Series A financing round, including intellectual property due diligence in connection with the deal. The Series A proceeds will enable Graphyte to launch an additional four carbon removal facilities over the course of 2025 and 2026, on its path towards removing more than 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030.

Cooley has served as primary IP counsel to Nobell Foods since its founding, helping the company to protect its innovative contributions aimed at making the world’s food systems more humane and sustainable. Nobell Foods is utilizing the power of plants to reimagine the world’s food supply and produce delicious cheese from plant-derived dairy proteins. The company recently completed a $75 million Series B in 2021 to help bring its vision to the world.

Cooley advised AppHarvest, a leading public agtech company and certified B Corp, on its acquisition of Root AI, an AI farming startup that creates intelligent robots to help manage high-tech indoor farms. In addition to advising on corporate matters, Cooley's IP team handled all patent due diligence aspects of the deal. Partner Josh Holleman led the Cooley team advising AppHarvest.

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Cooley advised Evolutionary Genomics (EG), an agricultural biotech company engaged in crop improvement through gene identification, in all contractual and intellectual property aspects of its partnership with Dole Food Company to develop and commercialize banana plant varieties resistant to a fungus that threatens to devastate the global supply of bananas, the most grown and consumed fruit in the world.

EG discovered a gene found in wild banana varieties that are resistant to a widespread strain of Fusarium fungus which has decimated global plantations of the most common commercial banana variety, Cavendish. Under the agreement, EG will use the gene to develop Cavendish-based varieties that restore the plant's natural ability to fight the pathogen. Upon successful completion, Dole will test the resulting plants in field trials and then embark on broad commercialization under a licensing agreement with EG.

Cooley advised California-based agricultural biotech growth company Pivot Bio on its $100 million Series C funding round, co-led by repeat investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and a global investment company. Pivot Bio has raised $186 million to date and plans to use the funds to scale-up its microbial nitrogen technology that helps farmers boost crop yield and reduce reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The funding will also be used to help the company expand internationally. "The strong backing by our Series C investors enables Pivot Bio to redefine the future of fertilizer and provide the world's farmers with a new nitrogen source. Based on remarkable demand, we expect to ramp up from our large current footprint to millions of additional acres in the next growing season." said Karsten Temme, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Pivot Bio, in a news release.

Cooley advised emerging crop protection company Provivi on its $45.5 million series C-2 financing round led by Vivo Capital, with participation from returning shareholders. Provivi has developed a truly disruptive technological platform that enables the scalable production of environmentally friendly insect pheromone products. These products are able to naturally disrupt the mating cycle of insect pests and reduce the current overreliance upon non-sustainable synthetic insecticides. "The Series C-2 financing is a new milestone in the growth of our company. It builds upon a very successful year where Provivi achieved several product registrations worldwide and launched our first product commercially in Mexico," said Dr. Pedro Coelho, cofounder and CEO of Provivi.

Cooley advised AgroSpheres on its $22 million Series B financing and led intellectual property due diligence in connection with the round. Cooley counsels AgroSpheres with respect to corporate matters and is the architect behind development of the company’s ever-expanding patent portfolio.

AgroSpheres’ biomanufacturing platform enables cost-effective manufacturing and successful field application of novel biological modalities. The unprecedented field success of foliar-applied AgriCell-RNAi technologies has garnered significant industry interest.

“In this unprecedented bear market, food security, environmental footprint, and supply chain resilience are of paramount importance,” said Payam Pourtaheri, founder and CEO of AgroSpheres. “We are thankful for the support from our partners at Lewis & Clark, OAS, Bidra, and Cavallo, as we take significant strides towards our vision of a future built by nature’s technologies and bring our biobased technologies to partners globally.”