"BYU initiated phone calls and letters about this issue more than seven years ago," he said, and university officials also formally met four times with company executives.

The university and Pfizer agreed in January to hire a professional mediator but have been unable to resolve the issue. "Monsanto and its successors gave the university no choice," Smart said.

BYU maintains in the lawsuit that Simmons discovered the COX-2 enzyme and signed a contract with Monsanto to develop NSAIDs that would protect the stomach while tackling pain and swelling. Instead, the lawsuit says, Monsanto advised BYU against getting patents that the company said would be unenforceable and promised to let the university know if something that could be patented came out of the work.

Patents did, in fact, result, but BYU was not told that it could have had a part in them. The lawsuit asks that dozens of existing patents be changed to reflect Simmons' role in discovering COX-2 and crediting him as an inventor.

Instead of living up to the contract, the lawsuit alleges that Monsanto officials started taking credit for the COX-2 discovery and cites examples, including news articles where a Monsanto scientist claims he discovered COX-2.

"Dan Simmons and BYU had a written contract with Monsanto to use his recent discovery of COX-2 to collaborate in development of a new aspirin-like drug," said Smart. "Until then, Monsanto had been heading down a different research path. Our lawsuit says they took Dr. Simmons' findings and discoveries and went on to develop a blockbuster drug without him, which we believe violated the contract by sharing none of the credit or compensation."

The lawsuit asks that dozens of COX-2 related patents be corrected to reflect Simmons' role. "These patents were all based on the work of Dr. Simmons," the lawsuit says.

In at least two Monsanto patents, the lawsuit says, "Monsanto fraudulently misrepresented that its cell-testing systems were constructed using human or murine COX-1 or COX-2 fragments" from a Michigan company. "Dr. Simmons has recently learned," the complaint says, that the cell systems in at least one case "were made using the clones Dr. Simmons had provided Monsanto."

The lawsuit also claims that the drug company misrepresented to the Food and Drug Administration Monsanto's "true role" in the development of Celebrex.

At the time Monsanto and BYU entered into their agreement, Monsanto was trying to develop a steroid-like project and was testing compounds for NSAID properties only so it could eliminate them from consideration, the complaint says.