On July 29, 2025, the Federal Court of Appeal (“FCA”) per Rennie J.A. dismissed an appeal from a trial judgment that found all claims in AGI Suretrack, LLC’s (“AGI”) 742 Patent invalid for anticipation or obviousness.
AGI Suretrack, LLC v. Farmers Edge Inc. 2025 FCA 134
Background
AGI’s 742 Patent relates to agricultural technology that enables equipment such as seeders and sprayers to transmit and communicate data that is subsequently used for various purposes. The invention automatically records farming data and supplements the data with location and time information. For example, the data collected can point out the location where a specific seed was planted.
The claimed invention includes a “relay device” that connects to farming vehicles using a message bus (ISOBUS). The relay device detects known messages that include information such as device class and manufacture code. Upon detection, the device matches the data to a known implement profile stored in its memory and sends the collected data to a cloud software using a data exchange software. This allows the tracking and monitoring of farming operations.
The Trial Decision
The trial judge, McHaffie J., dismissed AGI’s action. The Court concluded that Farmers Edge Inc.’s (“FEI”) accused products and software did not infringe any of the claims of AGI’s 742 Patent because they did not include an implement profile with a “device class” and “manufacture code” as those claim terms would have been understood by the skilled person. The trial judge construed these claim terms using the technical definitions from the ISO networking standard since the terms and their ISO technical meanings formed part of the common general knowledge of a skilled person. In doing so, he rejected the broader interpretation of these terms proposed by AGI.
The trial judge also concluded that all the claims were either anticipated by a prior art device, or obvious in view of the state of the art.
Our blog post on the trial decision is available here.
Federal Court of Appeal’s Decision
Standard of Review
The FCA confirmed that, at the appellate level, the standard of review for pure questions of law is correctness. However, for questions of fact or mixed fact and law, the standard of palpable and overriding error is applied.
While claim construction is itself a question of law, the trial judge is afforded deference in how they assess and weigh expert evidence. Therefore, the standard of palpable and overriding error is applied when assessing and weighing expert evidence. Likewise, infringement, anticipation and obviousness are questions of fact or mixed fact and law, and the palpable and overriding error standard is generally applicable except for extricable questions of law.
Claim Construction – Legal Principles
The FCA began its analysis by reaffirming that patents and patent claims must be construed purposively and that purposive construction includes reading the claims considering their purpose, the patent disclosure itself and the common general knowledge of a skilled person as of the date of publication. The patent in its entirety must be considered as the disclosure may shed light on technical or ambiguous terms. Importantly, although the patent’s disclosure may inform how the claims are to be construed, it cannot be used to modify their scope.
Furthermore, even though expert evidence may be required to assist with technical terms, the judge remains the final authority as claim construction is a question of law and thus not to be dictated by the experts.
Essentiality
The FCA also confirmed that purposive construction will show that some elements of a claim are essential, while others are non-essential. The legal test for determining if a claim element is non-essential has two steps: first, a purposive construction of the words of the claim must show that the element was clearly not intended to be essential; and second, the skilled person would have understood that removing or replacing the element would not affect the working of the invention.
Although trial judges had suggested recently that all elements of a claim are presumed to be essential unless established otherwise by the patentee, the FCA held this is in fact not the case. There is no presumption that claim elements are essential. Nevertheless, the burden lies with the party alleging non-essentiality to prove that is in fact the case.
AGI argued that the trial judge erred by failing to determine that the terms “manufacturer code” and “device class” were non-essential based on the language of the claims that expressly stated “one or more” of the parameters are used. AGI also argued that either element could be omitted without affecting how the invention worked, thereby rendering them non-essential.
While the trial judge erred when he stated that all claim elements are presumed to be essential, the FCA concluded that this mistake was ultimately irrelevant for two reasons. First, procedurally, non-essentiality must be raised and asserted by the party claiming it. At trial, AGI raised the issue of non-essentiality for the first time during its closing submissions without having first adduced any expert evidence on point. The trial judge found that AGI had failed to the properly raise this issue at trial and thus he was not obliged to find them non-essential. Second, substantively, AGI provided no evidence to prove the elements were non-essential. Importantly, AGI provided no proof that the claimed invention would function in the same way if those elements were substituted or omitted.
Infringement
The FCA declined to reconsider the FC’s infringement holding. FEI did not employ an implement profile containing a “manufacturer code” or “device class” as required by the claims. Infringement of a patent claim requires that all of its essential elements, as purposively interpreted, are present in the impugned product.
Anticipation
The trial judge agreed with FEI that a prior art device called the GreenStar 3, manufactured and sold by Deere & Company prior to the patent’s relevant date, anticipated certain claims of the 742 Patent. The trial judge relied on GreenStar 3’s user manual, advertising brochures, ISOBUS manual, etc. that described the GreenStar 3 in his analysis.
AGI argued the trial judge erred in two ways: first, by carrying out an improper “mosaicking” of the prior art since he considered numerous documents; and second, by making factual errors in his analysis and interpretation of the attributes of the GreenStar 3 device.
In this case, AGI argued that, by referring to more several documents about the GreenStar 3 device, the trial judge improperly considered a mosaicking of prior art. The FCA disagreed. The trial judge had carried out the correct anticipation analysis because he considered whether the device itself anticipated, not the documents. Where anticipation is alleged by prior sale and use of a physical product, contemporary references such as user manuals, advertising brochures, etc. are not themselves alleged to anticipate. Rather, the trial judge can properly use them to obtain a description of the functions and properties of the single allegedly anticipatory device, here the GreenStar 3.
Obviousness
In the obviousness analysis, the FCA confirmed that generally, the obviousness analysis requires determining, objectively and purposively, whether a skilled person with their common general knowledge would have come directly and without difficulty to the claimed invention having regard to the problem it was designed to address. In doing so, the cumulative effect of the prior art is to be considered.
To assist with this analysis, courts identify the “inventive concept” of the claims and compare the teachings in the prior art to this inventive concept. AGI argued that the trial judge misinterpreted the patent’s inventive concept because the general inventive concept of the patent was to solve interoperability problems with prior art systems. However, the FCA found no error in the trial judge’s decision, stating that it is the inventive concept of the claims that must be considered, not a general inventive concept of the patent.
Further Appeal
AGI has 60 days from the date of the FCA’s judgment to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.