Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/473

 BUSINESS RELATIONS 441

pelling an author to use his brain for a certain pur- pose, and the remedy against the author in this event is rather a suit for loss by failure to perform the con- tract, which loss is difficult to prove. If any remedy is to be provided, it should be stated in the contract as a specified penalty to be paid by the author, — a provision seldom included in publishing contracts. That an author may be held liable for a breach of con- tract if he declined without good cause to complete a work already partly delivered, was indicated in the early English case of Gale v. Leckie in 1817. An agree- ment to write a book may stand as an equitable as- signment on the completion of the book, as was held in Ward, Lock & Co. v. Long, in 1906 in the Chancery Division by Justice Kekewich.

An author who has contracted not to write on a Contract stated subject or for other publishers, may be en- not to write joined from such act. This was decided by early English precedents, as when in the case of Morris v. Colman, in 18 12, Lord Chancellor Eldon held that Colman, in virtue of his contract to write plays for the Haymarket Theatre and for no other, could be restrained from furnishing plays to another theatre, though he could not be compelled to write plays ; the same judge, in Clarke v. Price, held in 18 19 that he could neither compel Price to continue to furnish Ex- chequer reports to the plaintiff publisher nor restrain him from furnishing such reports to another publisher, because the contract contained no specific provision to the latter effect. It is probable that the undertak- ing of an author not to prejudice the sale of his book by writing another of like subject, though under a different title, may be enforced even against a succeed- ing publisher who had no knowledge of that under- taking, as was indicated in Barfield v. Nicholson in 1824. Thus publishers were granted equitable relief