V MANIOKA THEVAR Vs. STAR PLOUGH WORKS MELUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE brief facts of the case are as follows. The appellant filed the suit, O. 8 No. 3 of 1964 on the file of the District Judge, Madurai, under S. 29 of the Patents and designs Act, against the respondent for a permanent injunction restraining the respondent form manufacturing and selling certain patterns of ploughs on he ground that he respondent's conduct was an infringement of the plaintiff's patent. The plaintiff obtained an interim injunction in 1. A. 181 of 1964, but, on an application filed by the defendant-respondent in I. A. 182 of 1964, the interim injunction was vacated. The plaintiff has preferred the above appeals complaining that the learned District Judge should have granted the interim injunction pending disposal of the suit.

(2.) THE plaintiff is a manufacturer and dealer engaged in the sale of ploughs and plough shares know as "bose ploughs" or "plough shares" and the plaintiff's case is that in the course of the business he has been experimenting and inventing new patterns of ploughs as a result of his inventive genius and prolonged research and that he obtained a patent on 12-10-1960 in respect of a particular pattern of plough, having a special twist distinguishing his pattern from the other ploughs in the market. The plaintiff's case was that he commenced production and sale of this particular type of plough from October 1962, that about March 1964, the defendant slavishly imitated the plaintiff's pattern by manufacturing ploughs and selling the same in the market.

(3.) THE defendant resisted the claim on the ground that the plaintiff cannot claim any inventive genius or special research in the particular pattern of plough which he was manufacturing having regard to the prior public knowledge and obviousness arising from the manufacture and sale of ploughs long before the manufacture and sale of ploughs long before the controversy arose. The defendant claimed that he has been manufacturing ploughs of various patterns form the year 1958, and that the particular pattern, "no. 99 Star master" which is complained of as an infringement is not any imitation of the plaintiff's pattern, but it is as a result of the defendant's invention and improvement upon the patterns of ploughs which he had been manufacturing and selling.