McCain Foods Limited v. J.R. Simplot Company, 2026 FCA 71
Justice Monaghan; Justice Heckman; Justice Rochester - 2026-04-14
Read full decision. Automatically generated summary:
This appeal concerns a decision by the Federal Court (2025 FC 1078) addressing allegations of infringement and invalidity of McCain Canadian Patent No. 2,412. … Central to this appeal is the Federal Court’s conclusion that such a skilled person would understand the term “high electric field” as used in Claim 1 to refer to electric fields in the range of 2 to 200 V/cm. As the Respondents Simplot use a technology known as pulsed electric field, in the range of 1,000 V/cm or more, the Federal Court concluded that the pulsed electric field systems used by Simplot did not infringe the ’841 Patent during its lifetime. … We find that in construing the term “high electric field” in Claim 1, the Federal Court’s claim construction was based on its appreciation of the expert evidence after having considered both sides of the debate in considerable detail. Consequently, in order for this Court to intervene, we must be satisfied that there is a palpable and overriding error. … The Federal Court acknowledged that a patent claim is not limited to the preferred embodiments described in the disclosure, but rightly, in our view, considered that the preferred embodiments are not irrelevant and may be considered as part of purposive construction. Having carefully considered the Federal Court’s analysis of the preferred embodiments, being the inventors’ discussion of their testing, we find no reviewable error.
Decision relates to:
- A-288-25 - MCCAIN FOODS LIMITED v. J.R. SIMPLOT COMPANY et al. which is an appeal from 2025 FC 1078 in T-1624-17