AGCO Cements Finding It Didn’t Infringe Deere Patents on Appeal

AGCO Corp. and its Precision Planting unit convinced a federal appeals court to uphold a Delaware judge’s ruling that its seed-delivery products didn’t infringe two patents belonging to tractor giant Deere & Co.

“AGCO presented ample evidence” that its allegedly infringing seed-delivery products work differently from the systems and methods described in the Deere patents, Judge Sharon Prost wrote for the panel in an opinion issued Friday by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The opinion cited expert testimony stating AGCO’s SpeedTube and vSet2 devices, which farmers attach to planters, spit out seeds “by projecting and ...