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OTTAWA -- Canada's highest court sided with Monsanto Co. in a seven-year dispute over technology in farming, giving the Missouri-based agribusiness titan broad rights under patent law to control its genetically engineered crops.

The Supreme Court of Canada rejected a Saskatchewan farmer's contention that he was an innocent bystander and should not have to pay for seeds he insists had arrived on his field by accident.

The legal battle dates to 1997 when St. Louis-based Monsanto found on Percy Schmeiser's farm a canola variety the U.S. company had engineered to resist its powerful Roundup weedkiller.

Some farmers, especially those from developing nations, fear that natural or accidental contamination of their conventional crops with biotech varieties will give biotech companies like Monsanto licenses to seize their crops.

Anti-biotech activists had hoped the Supreme Court would limit the reach of Monsanto patent or perhaps even invalidate its right to patent a life form just as the court had denied in 2002 Harvard University's patent to a genetically engineered mouse used in cancer research.

The court not only validated Monsanto's patent, but also gave the company the broadest authority to exercise it, not limiting its application to the research lab or cases where farmers more directly benefited from it.

"This could be a disturbing precedent for research" if biotech companies own not just the gene, but everything it gets into, said Andrew Kimbrell, director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington D.C-based watchdog group.

Biotechnology analysts said the ruling reaffirmed the need to compensate companies for research and development.

"Industry needs a certain level of assurance from society that it can get back some of its investment in research," said Chanapatna Prakash, professor of biotechnology at Tuskegee University in Alabama. "What happened is against the law. It's no different than stealing software or pirating a movie."

The case also highlighted the growing concern among organic farmers and other conventional growers over controlling the accidental spread of genetically engineered crops into their fields.

Consumers pay a premium for organic food, but a number of farmers are finding trace amounts of genetically engineered crops in their fields, raising liability issues for biotech companies.

Conventional farmers fear biotech-averse consumers, especially in Europe, will reject their crops if they're found to be widely cross-pollinated with genetically engineered plants.

Kimbrell said future cases must decide if the Canadian court's extension of patent rights also extends liability.

"This could come out and bite the company in Canada," said Kimbrell, if biotech companies must compensate organic farmers, for instance, when crops are contaminated by genetically modified plants and cannot be sold.

Monsanto alleged that Schmeiser obtained its seeds without paying for them. Schmeiser argued the Roundup Ready canola seed arrived by accident in 1997, either from blowing off a passing truck or by cross-pollination from nearby fields.

He said he saved the seeds to mix with his own and planted it across his farm in 1998 before Monsanto got an injunction. He claimed he did not know the seeds included those Monsanto had patented.

The Supreme Court majority rejected that explanation, writing that Schmeiser failed to explain why he ended up with about 1,000 acres of the seeds that would have cost more than $10,000.

The court did overturn a lower court ruling ordering him to pay the profits - just shy of $14,400 - from the sale of his 1998 crop. The court said Schmeiser did not directly benefit because his farm had not used the weedkiller the seed was designed to resist.

Still, that did not absolve him from patent infringement, and Schmeiser will have to turn over any remaining crops and seeds.

Schmeiser said he was disappointed, but expected legislatures in Canada and elsewhere would ultimately have to address the reach of what he considered outdated patent law.

"I know it in my heart I will always fight for the right of farmers to use their seeds from year to year," he said.

Monsanto called the decision "good news for farmers and Canadians, all of (whom) benefit from the innovative work that is going on across the country to produce more abundant, high quality food."

Forty percent of the overall canola crop in Canada is Monsanto-Roundup Ready variety.

Monsanto stock dropped 12 cents to close at $33.08 on the New York Stock Exchange.