Joseph McKenna

“ It clearly appears from the record that the United Shoe Machinery Company dominates the trade in certain kinds of shoe machinery furnished to manufacturers all over the country; which machinery is essential to the successful prosecution of the business of manufacturing shoes. It has many customers to whom it supplies these machines under leases, and such customers are required to accept the terms of these instruments or go without the machines. ”

“ Obviously, the attaching of the sole of a shoe to the upper is the difficult and dominating operation in the manufacture of shoes by machinery, and early in the trial the charge of the government in the case, by stipulation in open court, became, that the consolidation was formed for the purpose of monopolizing interstate trade or commerce in machinery adapted to that purpose, the 'bottoming of shoes,' in violation of both the first and second sections of the Anti-Trust Act of 1890. ”

“ The attempt made in argument to justify as familiar business practice such contracts as these, binding inventors from whom patents and other property were purchased to surrender to the United Company all of the fruits of their inventive genius for many years after the purchase and often for many years after their employment had ceased, is disingenuous in the extreme. ”

“ The necessary effect of these prohibitive provisions, in view of the dominating control of the business by the lessor, is to prevent the lessee from using other similar machines however advantageous to him it may be to do so, unless he is willing to incur the peril of losing machinery essential to his business. ”

“ In the Motion Picture Case the right of a patentee to place restrictions upon the use of a patented machine, and to limit its use by a purchaser, or purchaser's lessee, to terms stated in the license agreement, was considered. This court held that such limitations as were there involved upon the use of patented machines were not within the scope of the patent. It was upon the expanded right to use an invention that the Button Fastener Case, 77 Fed. ”

“ The stress of the argument on behalf of the company is rested upon the fact that it is the owner of letters patent issued by the United States, and that within the monopoly created by such patents it has the right to make and enforce such contracts as are herein involved. ”

“ Brewer's $250 application for a patent was not too small to be overlooked, and we shall see a $6,000,000 purchase was not too great to be made in order to continue, to extend, and to make secure, the complete control over the business involved, which was first attained by the consolidation of the Good-year and Consolidated Companies and the purchase of the McKay and Eppler Companies in 1899. ”

“ In case the lessee has work of the kind which can be performed by the machines belonging to the metallic department of the lessor in excess of the capacity of the metallic machinery which he has under lease from the lessor, then the lessee shall either take from the lessor sufficient additional machinery to perform the work, or failing so to do the lessor may cancel the lease forthwith, or any other lease of metallic machinery then in force between the parties. ”

“ Moreover, the questions in this case are to be tried upon the effect of the leases actually made, and for years to remain in force. When it is considered that these results may be obtained in the conduct of a great business industry by this system of 'tying' contracts, the necessary effect to restrain the freedom of commerce, and the attempt to effect monopolization, seems to me to be established. ”

“ It would seem that men who were not bent upon complete monopoly and control would have been satisfied with the advantages which, we have thus seen, those in this enterprise clearly held over any competitors who might remain or who might appear in the future. ”

“ The difficulties of bringing the defendants within the restraints of the law, which are regarded by the court as all but insurmountable, seem unimpressive in the presence of the resolute manner with which this court dealt with difficulties quite as complex and interests vastly greater, in the Northern Securities, Standard Oil, and Tobacco Company Cases, supra. ”

“ Standing alone it shows the defendant to be an unmistakable offender against the Anti-Trust law, but when taken together with the origin of the company and with the history of the conduct of it, a small but typical part of which we have described, it seems to me a flagrant and an all but confessed offender against that law, as it has been repeatedly interpreted by this court, United States v. ”

“ The lessee shall at the election of the lessor, suffer a termination of all leases which he may have, and the removal of all machines leased by him from the defendants, in the event of any violation of any term of any one of the leases. ”