Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/37

11 TERRITORIAL RIGHTS IN PATENTED ARTICLES. II of the contract. Lord Justice Knight Bruce said: "Reason and justice seem to prescribe that, at least as a general rule, where a man by gift or purchase acquires property from another, with knowledge of a previous contract, lawfully and for a valuable con- sideration made by him with a third person to use and employ the property for a particular purpose and in a specified manner, the acquirer shall not, to the material damage of the third person, in opposition to his contract and inconsistent with it, use the prop- erty in a manner not allowable to the giver or seller. This rule, applicable alike in general, as I conceive, to movable and immov- able property, recognized and adopted, as I apprehend, by the English law, may, like other general rules, be liable to exceptions arising from special circumstances, but I see at present no room for any exception in the instance before us." And he issued an injunction restraining the mortgagee, with notice of the charter- party, from interfering with the voyage to Suez. The contract in this case was not a contract imposing a per- petual restriction upon the mode of the use of an article, and it was not in this respect analogous to a restrictive covenant, nor can the case be considered as authority for the proposition that such a restriction can be put upon the use of personal property. It was a contract made by the owner agreeing to give another the right to use the article for a certain time, and the charter-party may have been regarded as giving an equitable interest in the vessel for the voyage. It was a contract which would be considered in equity -as giving the third person a right in the ship which the purchaser with notice would not be permitted to violate. The significance of the decision in the present discussion is, that the court declares, in referring to personal -property, the doctrine which has become the basis of the rule adopted in dealing with restrictive covenants with respect to the use of real estate. The court of equity in restraining the violation of restrictive covenants with respect to the use of land does not enforce any rule of the common law relating to real estate. It does not confine the remedy to cases in which the covenant runs with the land, nor does it base its action altogether upon the idea of an equitable easement, but originally and chiefly upon the ground that the pur- chaser who has taken the land with notice of a contract made for the benefit of other land of the vendor, or his assigns, shall not be permitted in equity to use it in a manner inconsistent with the contract. The cases on this subject are discussed in an article by