Du Pont De Nemours Powder Company v. Walter Masland
| Decision Date | 21 May 1917 |
| Docket Number | No. 210,210 |
| Citation | 61 L.Ed. 1016,244 U.S. 100,37 S.Ct. 575 |
| Parties | E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS POWDER COMPANY and Du Pont Fabrikoid Company, Petitioners, v. WALTER E. MASLAND et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Edwin J. Prindle, Warren H. Small, John P. Laffey, and Kenneth S. Neal for petitioners.
Messrs. George Wharton Pepper, John G. Johnson, and Frank Smith for respondents.
This is a bill to prevent the defendant Walter E. Masland from using or disclosing secret processes the knowledge of which was acquired by the defendant while in the plaintiffs' employ. The defendant admits that he intends to manufacture artificial leather, to which some of the plaintiffs' alleged secret processes relate, but denies that he intends to use any inventions, trade secrets, or secret processes of the plaintiffs that he may have learned in any confidential relation, prefacing his denial, however, with the averment that many of the things claimed by the plaintiffs are well known to the trade. A preliminary injunction was refused at first. 216 Fed. 271. But before the final hearing the defendant proposed to employ one or more experts and to make such disclosures to them as the preparation of the defense might require. Thereupon the district court issued a preliminary injunction against disclosing any of the plaintiffs' alleged processes to experts or witnesses during the taking of proofs, but excepting counsel, with leave to move to dissolve the injunction if occasion to consult experts arose. Later a motion to dissolve was denied and the hearing was continued for a decision by the appellate court. 222 Fed. 340. The circuit court of appeals reversed the decree. 140 C. C. A. 229, 224 Fed. 689. Before any further order was entered the writ of certiorari was granted by this court.
The case has been considered as presenting a conflict between a right of property and a right to make a full defense; and it is said that if the disclosure is forbidden to one who denies that there is a trade secret, the merits of his defense are adjudged against him before he has a chance to be heard or to prove his case. We approach the question somewhat differently. The word 'property' as applied to trademarks and trade secrets is an unanalyzed expression of certain secondary consequences of the primary fact that the law makes some rudimentary requirements of good faith. Whether the plaintiffs have any valuable secret or not the...
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