MOSCOW (MRC) -- 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 (PE) resins, as per Plastemart.
In late April, a federal judge issued a written decision that details how much Dow can claim from an estimated USD1 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.
As MRC reported before, NOVA Chemicals Corporation, a leading supplier of polyethylene in the Americas, has announced the start up of its new world-scale linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) gas phase reactor at its Joffre, Alberta site, in December 2016.
Nova Chemical is one of the largest world's petrochemical companies, a manufacturer of polyethylene, styrene polymers, monomers, and many other related products.
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