Monsanto sells, and allows other companies to sell, its patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds to growers who agree to a special licensing agreement that permits a grower to plant the purchased seeds in one (and only one) season. He can then consume the resulting crop or sell it as a commodity, usually to a grain elevator or agricultural processor. Under the agreement, the farmer may not save any of the harvested soybeans for replanting, nor may he supply them to anyone else for that purpose. (A single Roundup Ready seed can grow a plant containing dozens of genetically identical beans, each of which, if replanted, can grow another such plant—and so on and so on.) Vernon Bowman purchased Roundup Ready each year and sold his entire crop to a grain elevator. 

However, for his second crop of each season, Bowman did not want to pay the premium prices Monsanto charges for Roundup Ready seed because late-season planting is risky. Instead, he purchased “commodity soybeans” intended for human or animal consumption from a grain elevator and planted them in his fields. Because most of the farmers in the area also used Roundup Ready seed, Bowman could anticipate that many of the seeds he purchased would contain Monsanto’s patented technology. Bowman saved seed from his late-season planting to use for his second planting in each of the subsequent years. When Monsanto sued for patent infringement, Bowman raised patent exhaustion as a defense. Is Bowman’s practice protected under the patent exhaustion doctrine? Explain.