A Canadian court has ruled in favour of Farmers Edge after a years-long legal battle with fellow Winnipeg-based AgTech firm Ag Growth International (AGI).
The ruling follows a similar conclusion between Farmers Edge and AGI in a Nebraska court back in April.
The court dismissed AGI’s assertion that Farmers Edge has infringed on its patent for a “Farming Data Collection and Exchange System,” and granted Farmers Edge’s counterclaim that all claims in the patent are, and have always been, invalid and void. The judge also dismissed AGI’s motion to reopen the trial.
Part of the “Farming Data Collection and Exchange System” patent covers a relay device for tracking farming operations for a farming business, including hardware such as microprocessors, a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, and an application program that extracts the data to match farming implementations to their operations.
The ruling was made in accordance with section 28.3 of the Patent Act, which states that “subject-matter defined by a claim in an application for a patent in Canada must be subject-matter that would not have been obvious on the claim date to a person skilled in the art or science to which it pertains.”
AGI had inherited the suit, which began in 2017, after acquiring the Leawood, Kans.-based company Farmobile in 2021.
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The ruling follows the conclusion of a similar case between Farmers Edge and AGI in a Nebraska court back in April. That case saw the judge dismiss AGI’s claims of patent infringement against Farmers Edge, and rule that five precision agriculture technology patents asserted by AGI were invalid. The Nebraska court ruled that AGI’s patent was ultimately an unpatentable, abstract idea.
Founded in 2005, Farmers Edge is a digital agriculture company that offers data-centric technologies designed to help farmers and agri-businesses operate more sustainably.
After debuting on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2021, Farmers Edge is one of many Canadian tech companies that have opted to go private in the last year. In late 2023, Farmers Edge’s stock had fallen to below 10 cents per share, and the company announced that it was in talks to go private. By January, the company entered into an agreement with Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited to go private.
Earlier this year, Farmers Edge partnered on a project with Colorado-based renewable fuels company Gevo to track the carbon intensity impact of climate-friendly agricultural practices.
Feature image courtesy wflwong via Unsplash.
