An injunction is an equitable remedy[a] in the form of a special court order that compels a party to refrain from specific acts.
[1][2] It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable remedy of the "interdict".
[3] "When a court employs the extraordinary remedy of injunction, it directs the conduct of a party, and does so with the backing of its full coercive powers.
"[4] A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment.
First, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, federal courts used injunctions to break strikes by unions.
Federal courts gave injunctions that carried out the command of Brown v Board of Education to integrate public schools in the United States, and at times courts took over the management of public schools in order to ensure compliance.
[15] For both temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, the goal is usually to preserve the status quo until the court is able to decide the case.
A special kind of injunction that may be issued before trial is called a "temporary restraining order" or TRO.
A TRO will be given only for a short period of time before a court can schedule a hearing at which the restrained person may appear and contest the order.
Temporary restraining orders are often, but not exclusively, given to prevent domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, or harassment.
Because they are issued at an early stage, before the court has heard the evidence and made a decision in the case, they are more rarely given.
[21] There is an ongoing debate among legal and economic scholars with major implications for antitrust policy in the United States as well as in other countries over the statutory limits to the patent holder's right to seek and obtain injunctive relief against infringers of standard-essential patents.
[22] Citing concerns of the absence of competition facing the patent holder once its technology is locked-in to the standard, some scholars argue that the holder of a standard-essential patent should face antitrust liability when seeking an injunction against an implementer of a standard.
[25] In England and Wales, injunctions whose existence and details may not be legally reported, in addition to facts or allegations which may not be disclosed, have been issued; they have been informally dubbed "super-injunctions".
[30] Roy Greenslade credits the former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, with coining the word "super-injunction" in an article about the Trafigura affair in September 2009.
One known hyper-injunction was obtained at the High Court in 2006, preventing its subject from saying that paint used in water tanks on passenger ships can break down and release potentially toxic chemicals.
[37]An injunction described by the European Commission as allowing the repeated blocking of a website every time a live broadcast is in progress.