32 F. 484 | U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of Iowa | 1887
(orally,) We shall not attempt to discuss the various questions which were argued with such signal ability and care by counsel in the case, but simply state our conclusions. On an application for a preliminary injunction the court considers always the relative situation of the parties, and the injury or benefit which may result to either from the granting or the refusing of the injunction. Such an order is spoken
The complainant's patent expires next’ spring. The defendant has not, solar as the testimony shows, engaged in the manufacture or sale of his electric brake in this country. Ho had it here on exhibition, and that is the direct matter complained of. It is undoubtedly true that a party may, before the expiration of another’s patent, make all his arrangements of machinery, buildings, and everything of that kind for going into the business of manufacturing the patented article at the time the patent expires. There are but a few months before the expiration of the patent, and we have hesitated a good deal upon that, whether in view of this fact there was any propriety in granting a preliminary injunction, and yet it may he, and oftentimes is, as is stated by counsel, true that the last years or months of a patent are the most valuable to the patentee by reason of the fact that the widespread information in respect to its value and general introduction into use has created the largest demand for it.
Taking that into account, also, the fact that if defendant means to introduce the electric brake into this country it must take him some time before he can he in position to put it largely before the railroad world,