JUDGMENT

Haji Abdul Malek bin Haji Ahmad J:

By summons in chambers filed on 6 October 1993 upon a certificate of urgency, the plaintiffs had applied for an order that the defendants whether by themselves, their officers, servants or agents or any of them be restrained forthwith, until trial or further order, from manufacturing septic anaerobic filter tanks made in accordance with the specification and containing the features identified in the claims of the Malaysian patent MY-102409-A and/or importing, exporting, selling, offering for sale, stocking, distributing septic anaerobic filter tanks under the trade brand "ZATS, Anaerobic Filter Tanks" or otherwise referred to as "Zamrod Anaerobic Filter Tanks" identified as models ZATS 1900 and ZATS 2900 or under any other trade brand or model of the defendants, or enabling, assisting or causing others to do any of the acts hereinbefore set out, such further and other relief as may be deemed just in the circumstances and costs in the cause.

By summons in chambers filed on 5 November 1993, the defendants had prayed for the following:

(a) an order pursuant to O. 15 r. 6 of the Rules of the High Court 1980 (hereinafter "the Rules") that the second plaintiff to cease to be a party;

(b) an order that the plaintiffs' statement of claim be struck out and the plaintiffs' action against the second defendant be dismissed under O. 18 r. 19 of the Rules and/or under the inherent jurisdiction of the Court on the ground that the same-

(i) discloses no reasonable cause of action against the second defendant;

(ii) is scandalous, frivolous or vexatious; or

(iii) is an abuse of the process of the Court;

(c) costs of the action and costs of the application be paid by the plaintiffs to the second defendant.

When the parties came before me on 16 December 1993, they had agreed that the defendants' application be heard first and after hearing arguments from both sides, I had on 12 January 1994 held that all the parties named in the action were involved in the matter and had dismissed the said application with costs. On that same day, I had heard the plaintiffs' application for the injuction and after considering the submission of learned Counsel for both parties, I had ruled on 7 February 1994 that the balance of convenience was in favour of the defendants and had refused to grant the injuction.The said application was therefore dismissed with costs. I had, however, ordered an early trial of the matter.

At the trial before me, the plaintiff had called four witnesses and the defendants three. The first witness for the plaintiff Dr. Robiatun Aduwiyah binti Jamaluddin was the medical officer of the Pahang State Medical Department and she told the Court that when she was the District Health Officer in 1991 and 1992, she had had occasion to order the renovation of sewerage works at the District Health Centre. She said that the work had progressed in the normal way under the supervision of the public works department. However, she had subsequently received complaints of two of the nine units giving way during installation. Another two units also gave way and all four were replaced by the second defendant. The contractor had in fact earlier agreed to buy the nine units from the second defendant. She added that although at the site meeting on 6 June it had been agreed that the supersept SS-2 models of the second plaintiff were to be used, the second defendant had supplied the Zats-2900 models. After all the nine units had been installed, she said that she had written to the second defendant on 22nd September 1992 to tell him that there had been no complaints. Under cross-examination, she testified that the problems encountered were, according to the contractor, related to the method of installation and had nothing to do with the designs of the models.

The second witness for the plaintiff Michael Tan Teck Siong was the manager of office operations of Pinkerton Singapore, a private investigation company ow