ederal Court. I
thought that was final and would end the matter, but another Federal
judge out in St. Louis did not sustain it. The result is I have never
enjoyed any benefits from my lamp patents, although I fought for many
years." The Goebel case will be referred to later in this chapter.

The original owner of the patents and inventions covering his
electric-lighting system, the Edison Electric Light Company (in which
Edison was largely interested as a stockholder), thus found at the
outset that its commercial position was imperilled by the activity of
competitors who had sprung up like mushrooms. It became necessary to
take proper preliminary legal steps to protect the interests which had
been acquired at the cost of so much money and such incessant toil and
experiment. During the first few years in which the business of the
introduction of the light was carried on with such strenuous and
concentrated effort, the attention of Edison and his original associates
was constantly focused upon the commercial exploitation and the
further development of the system at home and abroad. The difficult
and perplexing situation at that time is thus described by Major S. B.
Eaton:

"The reason for the delay in beginning and pushing suits for
infringements of the lamp patent has never been generally understood. In
my official position as president of the Edison Electric Light Company
I became the target, along with Mr. Edison, for censure from the
stockholders and others on account of this delay, and I well remember
how deep the feeling was. In view of the facts that a final injunction
on the lamp patent was not obtained until the life of the patent was
near its end, and, next, that no damages in money were ever paid by
the guilty infringers, it has been generally believed that Mr. Edison
sacrificed the interest of his stockholders selfishly when he delayed
the prosecution of patent suits and gave all his time and energies to
manufacturing. This belief was the stronger because the manufacturing
enterprises belonged personally to Mr. Edison and not to his company.
But the facts render it easy to dispel this false belief. The Edison
inventions were not only a lamp; they comprised also an entire system of
central stations. Such a thing was new to the world, and the apparatus,
as well as the manufacture thereof, was equally new. Boilers,
engines, dynamos, motors, distribution mains, meters, house-wiring,
safety-devices, lamps, and la