Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/444

 430 FEDEEAIi BEPOBTEB. �•whîch în terms gave the licensees no power to manufacture ; (2) an agreement by which the licensor agreed to furnish the hangings to the licensees at fixed priees, and the licensees agreed that they would not manufacture so long as the licensor kept his agreement ; (3) a permission from the licensor to the licensees to manufacture in case the licensor failed to perform his agreement. The court held that the three in- instruments, taken together, must have the interpretation claimed for them by the plaintiff. The defendants contended that they were bonafide purchaserswithout notice of anyinstru- ment but the recorded conveyance of August 27, 1866, and that they were protected from any unrecorded agreement between Milton A. Hamilton and Lombard & Thompson, in the absence of any actual notice thereof. On this question the court said : "The recording act in force when the defendants took their conveyance from Strong & Woodbury, on the tenth of pecember, 1869, was section 11 of the act of July 4, 1836, (5 U. S. St. at Large, 121,) which provided 'that every patent shall be assignable in law, either as to the whole interest or any undivided part thereof, by any instrument in writing, which assignment, and also every grant and conveyance of the exclusive right under any patent to make and use, and to grant to others to make and use, the thing patented, within and throughout any specified part or portion of the United States shall be recorded in the patent-office within three months from the execution thereof.' It is well settled that mere licenses or contracts conferring the limited and not the ex- clusive right to exercise some of the privileges secured by the patent are not the subjects of regulation by this statute ; and that it relates solely to grants or conveyances of the exclusive right or legal estate vested in the- patentee, which leave no interest in the patentee for the particular territory and the particular right to which they relate. Curtis on Pat- ents, (3d Ed.) § 179. Within this rule, the recorded conveyance of August 27, 1866, from Milton A. Hamilton to Lombard & Thompson, is notau assignment of the wholeinterest in the patent, or any undivided part therof ; nor is it a grant or con- veyance of the exclusive right, under the patent, to make ����