Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/42

16 l6 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. tract is one of the conditions under which he has acquired any rights at all. He may have bought goods already manufactured under the patent, or the right to make them himself. In either case, the contract with respect to the place in which they shall not be used is a limitation in equity upon his right to sell or use them. He sells them to one who has notice of the rights of others so reserved under the contract. The purchaser has a complete title at law. The goods are free from the restrictions of the patent laws, but he has purchased them with notice of a contract made by the owner of the patent rights for the protection of other rights which he retains, or has conferred upon others, and it would seem that equity should enjoin him from making use of the goods in viola- tion of the contract under which the right to sell them was acquired by his vendor. The contract is in fact a charge upon the fran- chise conveyed. It is at least an equitable right in another, and brings the case within the rule that a purchaser with notice of a right in another is in equity liable to the same extent and in the same manner as the person from whom he made the purchase.^ In such a case the right to an injunction would belong not merely to the patentee with whom the contract was made, but also to all the assignees of the franchises for the benefit of which the contract was. taken. The contract was not merely a personal one, but it was made in pursuance of a general plan for the divi- sion of the property represented by the franchise, and for the pro- tection of that franchise in the hands of the assignees of the several territories. The contract relates not merely to the sale of articles under the patent, but also to the exercise of the franchise itself. In purchasing the right to make and sell in a particular place, the purchaser buys a portion of the franchise which the patent confers. It was so held by the Supreme Court in Bloomer v. McQuewan,^ where a distinction was made between this and the right to use an article already sold, and in making an assignment of a territory or a license to make and sell within a certain territory the vendor who exacts a contract not to make or sell for use in another ter- ritory takes it for the protection of the portion of the franchise which he retains, or which he has sold or is about to sell to others. One who purchases the article, therefore, with notice of the contract, purchases it with notice of the rights of others which the contract was intended to protect. 1 Le Neve v. Le Neve, 2 White & Tudor's Ldg. Cas. Eq. 32, note, a 14 How. 539-549-