Nova ordered to pay major settlement to Dow in polymer patent suit

03-May-17

In what could be the largest patent infringement damage award in Canadian history, Nova Chemicals Corporation has been ordered to pay a major settlement to The Dow Chemical Company after a recent Canadian court ruling in a case involving polyethylene resins, as per canplastics.com. In late April, a federal judge issued a written decision that details how much Dow can claim from an estimated US$1 billion in revenue Nova collected while infringing on Dow’s Canadian patent 2,160,705, which sets out a method to make the thin plastic packaging used in end products such as garbage bags and food wrappings.

Dow actually won its infringement case in federal court in 2014, when Nova was found liable for infringement of a patent owned by Dow by Nova’s manufacture and sale of its Surpass film-grade polymers. Litigation continued on how the parties should calculate the damages, however, and a damages trial was heard in Toronto last December and January. Justice Simon Fothergill issued the public version of his 78-page written decision on April 19.
Justice Fothergill ordered Calgary-based Nova to disgorge profits it made during the infringement. The companies must now use the judge’s methodology to figure out how much those profits should be. “The parties’ accountants will calculate the sums owed by Nova to Dow based on the conclusions reached by the Court in this stage of the reference,” Justice Fothergill wrote.