een limited under the law, because
certain foreign patents had been issued to Edison before that in this
country, there was now but a short time left for enjoyment of the
exclusive rights contemplated by the statute and granted to Edison and
his assigns by the terms of the patent itself. A vigorous and aggressive
legal campaign was therefore inaugurated by the Edison Electric Light
Company against the numerous infringing companies and individuals that
had sprung up while the main suit was pending. Old suits were revived
and new ones instituted. Injunctions were obtained against many old
offenders, and it seemed as though the Edison interests were about to
come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental
patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the Edison camp in the
shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously
by one Henry Goebel. Thus, in 1893, the litigation was reopened, and a
protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was fought in the
courts.

Goebel's claims were not unknown to the Edison Company, for as far back
as 1882 they had been officially brought to its notice coupled with an
offer of sale for a few thousand dollars. A very brief examination into
their merits, however, sufficed to demonstrate most emphatically that
Goebel had never made a practical incandescent lamp, nor had he ever
contributed a single idea or device bearing, remotely or directly, on
the development of the art. Edison and his company, therefore, rejected
the offer unconditionally and declined to enter into any arrangements
whatever with Goebel. During the prosecution of the suits in 1893 it
transpired that the Goebel claims had also been investigated by the
counsel of the defendant company in the principal litigation already
related, but although every conceivable defence and anticipation had
been dragged into the case during the many years of its progress, the
alleged Goebel anticipation was not even touched upon therein. From
this fact it is quite apparent that they placed no credence on its bona
fides.

But desperate cases call for desperate remedies. Some of the infringing
lamp-manufacturing concerns, which during the long litigation had grown
strong and lusty, and thus far had not been enjoined by the court, now
saw injunctions staring them in the face, and in desperation set up the
Goebel so-called anticipation as a defence in the suits brought against
them.

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