Refrigeration appeal gets cold shoulder from Court of Appeal

Fromfroid manufactures air conditioning and refrigeration equipment for the agri-food industry. Fromfroid owned Canadian Patent No. 2,301,753, which covered a rapid cooling system for food products. Skotidakis is an Ontario dairy business that sought to purchase a new cooling system. Skotidakis trialed a Fromfroid cooling system and discussed a potential purchase from Fromfroid, but ultimately went with another supplier.

Very shortly after the 753 Patent expired, Fromfroid learned that Skotidakis had installed a cooling system that appeared to implement the technology covered by the 753 Patent. Fromfroid sued Skotidakis for patent infringement on the basis that the cooling system had been installed before the expiry of the 753 Patent. The Trial Judge found that Skotidakis had willfully infringed the 753 Patent and had attempted to mislead the Court regarding when the infringing cooling system had been built. The Court awarded Fromfroid both compensatory and punitive damages; Skotidakis appealed.

Skotidakis argued that the Trial Judge should not have awarded punitive damages because its documents did not show obvious signs of fabrication. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument, noting that the Trial Judge’s award of punitive damages was not based on a finding that documents had been falsified but instead based on evidence given by Skotidakis witnesses at trial. The Court of Appeal also rejected Skotidakis’s argument that the punitive damages awarded by the Trial Judge were more than what was “rationally required” to punish Skotidakis’s misconduct because this argument simply asked the Court of Appeal to reweigh the evidence.

A copy of the decision may be found here. The underlying decision of the Federal Court may be found here.