acquired the assets of Coats Company and thereafter continued to manufacture and distribute tire changers under the Coats trade name. In January 1962 Hennessy Industries, Inc.
were distributors for an Iowa company, Coats Company, which manufactured manual and semi-power tire changers. Predecessors of the present Hennessy Industries, Inc. Each party seeks attorneys' fees and, in the case of Hennessy/Coats, treble damages, on the ground that the other was a particularly egregious wrongdoer. It further contends that each of the patents is invalid or, in any event, is unenforceable. ("Hennessy/Coats") is the assignee of three patents on power tire changers which it claims are infringed by tire changers sold by FMC Corporation ("FMC/Vulcan"). Rulings thus require an extensive review of those facts, although by no means in the wealth of evidentiary detail argued in the post-trial briefs. Like many patent cases, however, it has also been dominated by claims of inequitable conduct ("fraud") in the Patent Office. Unlike many patent cases this litigation has *690 been fact-intensive, turning on "who, what, where, when" primary facts. The parties, after over 3500 pages of trial testimony and numerous depositions and exhibits, filed post-trial briefs in excess of 450 pages, and this court, after long delay, is finally prepared to rule. And this memorandum and order relates only to the first facet of a trifurcated litigation.
This litigation is but one facet of ongoing commercial warfare with a tenacity and duration rivaling the Peloponnesian War. Anderson, Neuman, Williams, Anderson & Olson, Chicago, Ill., for defendant. Megley, FMC Corporation, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs. Scavone, Niro, Jager & Scavone, Ltd., Richard B. Hosier, Hosier & Sufrin, Ltd., Raymond P. FMC CORPORATION and Vulcan Equipment Company, Ltd., Plaintiffs,
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