Today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Nova Chemicals Corp. v. Dow Chemical Co., 2022 SCC 43 regarding the quantification of an accounting of profits as a result of patent infringement. The majority dismissed the appeal with a focus on the ‘non-infringing option’: “a non-infringing option helps courts isolate the profits causally attributable to the invention from the profits which arose at the same time the infringing product was used or sold, but which are not causally attributable to the invention.” The majority also upheld springboard profits, saying, “a portion of such post-expiry profits may be causally attributable to infringement of the invention.”

The decision is an appeal from 2020 FCA 141 which had upheld an award granted by the trial judge in 2017 FC 350.