liebig’s extract of meat. 
297 
Since the end of July 1866, Messrs. Allen and Hanburys, druggists of Plough Court, 
Lombard Street, London, have been selling under the name “Liebig's Extract of Meat,' 
an extract of meat, manufactured according to Liebig’s method by Mr. Robert Tooth, a 
large proprietor of land and stock in Australia. 
For about the same period, as many of our readers are aware, Liebig’s Extract of 
Meat Co., limited, has been threatening persons, using the name “Liebig” as part of 
the designation of Extract of Meat, with legal proceedings. It now appears that in 
Sept. 1866, the Company actually did file a bill in Chancery to restrain Messrs. Allen 
and Hanburys from using such a designation. The proceedings were at first in the form 
of a Motion for Injunction, but were subsequently converted into a Motion for Decree. 
A large mass of evidence was accumulated on both sides;—indeed considering the 
narrow limits of the question at issue, the quantity of documents with printed books 
and other “ exhibits ” produced in court, was surprising. The case for the Plaintiffs was 
opened bv Mr. Druce, Q.C. The Bill, besides complaining of the use of Liebig’s name 
by the Defendants, suggested that the Plaintiffs packages had been imitated with in¬ 
tent to deceive etc., but this part of the case was so completely refuted by the “ex¬ 
hibits ” produced and other evidence, that it was virtually abandoned by the Plaintiffs 
counsel. 
In support of the main charge, the plaintiffs endeavoured in the first place to derive a 
title to the right of exclusive use of Baron Liebig’s name from alleged oral license given 
by the Baron to Mr. Giebert about the year 1862, but the only document produced in 
evidence of this, placed Dr. Pettenkofer, the Director of the Royal Pharmacy at Munich, 
on precisely the same footing as Baron Liebig, and merely showed that both agreed to 
lend their names in support of Mr. Giebert’s enterprise of establishing a manufactory of 
extract of meat in South America. 
This license was then alleged to have been transferred “ by arrangement ” to the Fray 
Bentos Company, but no evidence of such arrangement or transfer was produced, and 
the Plaintiffs Company was then said to have purchased the benefit of this arrangement, 
together with the other property of the Fray Bentos Company. But although two in¬ 
ventories of the property purported to be sold by the Fray Bentos Company were pro¬ 
duced, no exclusive right to the use of Baron Liebig’s name, or any special or secret 
process of manufacture was mentioned in either of them. 
All this however, though covering a great deal of paper, was very misty and was but 
little insisted upon, and the Plaintiffs appeared to rest their case mainly on the following 
statements, viz.— 
1st. That “ Extraction Carnis ” was not an article of commerce before the introduc¬ 
tion of the Fray Bentos Company’s manufacture from South America in 1865. 
2nd. That Liebig’s name was never used as a part of the designation of extract made 
by his process, until so used with his consent by the Fray Bentos Co.; except by Dr. 
Pettenkofer at the Royal Pharmacy at Munich, which however, it was stated, had been 
done for only four or five years, and then with Baron Liebig’s verbal permission. 
3rd. That Liebig had never published definite directions for making extract of meat, 
but that he had communicated special information to the Plaintiffs or their predecessors, 
and that consequently their manufacture was “ essentially a different thing ” from that 
made by other persons, or by the formula of the Bavarian Pharmacopoeia ; the affidavits 
of Liebig and Pettenkofer stating for this, among many reasons, that the Extract of the 
Bavarian and German Pharmacopoeias is made with “ Cows flesh." 
The Plaintiffs had filed altogether upwards of sixty affidavits, in support of these state¬ 
ments, a large proportion of them having been obtained from the Continent. 
On the other side the answer of the defendants was read. It pointed out the futility 
of the attempt to derive any title to the exclusive use of Liebig’s name from what was 
alleged to have taken place in 1862 or subsequently, and, tracing the history of the 
Baron’s invention and its oft-repeated publication, showed that it had, to all appearance, 
been given to the world from 1847, and that as no desire to restrain the use of Liebig’s 
name in connexion therewith had been published till 1866, and as the necessity for dis¬ 
tinguishing the extract made by Liebig’s process from other extracts, existed and was 
strongly insisted upon by Liebig himself, although he proposed no special name for it, 
his name, as that of the inventor, was in accordance with usual custom, naturally ap¬ 
plied to the article. Several printed books published at intervals from 1851 to 1866 
were produced in evidence that such had been the fact. Numerous affidavits, some of 
