Preliminary Injunction

A preliminary injunction is a temporary order that a court issues before reaching a final decision in a case, aimed at preventing urgent harm while the case is still ongoing. A full trial can take months or even years, and if the disputed conduct continues during that time, winning the case later may come too late to undo the damage. So courts sometimes step in mid-case to order that an action be stopped, or that something be done, on a temporary basis.

Think of it like a construction site where a safety concern is raised: authorities halt construction before the official investigation is complete. If the investigation later finds no problem, construction resumes; if it finds a real issue, the halt continues. The key point is that a preliminary injunction is not the final ruling — it's a stopgap measure that holds until a final decision is reached.

Preliminary injunctions often come up when a government sanctions a company, or when a company sues to challenge a government action. If a court finds that a sanction appears to lack sufficient grounds and issues a preliminary injunction suspending its effect, the sanction stops working until the full trial concludes. But since this is only a provisional judgment, it can still be overturned later.

The article reports that a U.S. court found the sanctions against Anthropic appeared to lack sufficient grounds, while noting that it is unconfirmed whether this was a preliminary injunction or a final ruling on the merits. If it was a preliminary injunction, the case is still ongoing and the ruling could still be reversed; if it was a final ruling, it is close to the case's actual conclusion. The two should not be read as carrying equal weight.