Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/45

19 TERRITORIAL RIGHTS IN PATENTED ARTICLES, 19 not notice, but it is plain that the question of notice was consid- ered to be pertinent, and the inference is, that, if they had bought the machines with notice of the contract that no one except the plaintiff should be allowed to use them within the district, they would have been restrained from using them there. In Dickerson v. Matheson in the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,^ a notice of restriction against importation into the United States was held to be binding upon one who pur- chased patented articles in London from one who held both the German and the United States patents. It was held that the defendant had not succeeded in an attempt by indirection to make the purchase without notice of the restriction, and that the articles remained subject to the United States patent, and that the defend- ant, using them in the United States, was guilty of infringement. The court said : " A purchaser in a foreign country of an article patented in that country and also in the United States, from the owner of each patent, or from a licensee under each patent, who purchases without restriction upon the extent of his use or power of sale, acquires an unrestricted ownership of the article, and can use it in this country. The cases which have been heretofore de- cided by the Supreme Court in regard to unrestricted ownership by purchasers in this country of articles patented in this country and sold to such purchasers without limitation or condition, lead up to this principle." This seems to imply that the doctrine that patented articles once sold are free from the monopoly applies only to cases in which they are sold without limitation or condition, and that a sale made with such a restriction would not be held to give an unrestricted right to the purchaser. If the vendor has parted with his legal right, there would at least remain a right enforce- able in equity against a purchaser with notice. In the case just referred to, the legal right under the patent was held to be affected by the notice. The purchase being made in England from the owner of the patent in Germany and in the United States, and being made with notice that the goods were not to be used in the United States, it was held that they could not be used there with- out infringing the United States patent. "It was decided," as Judge Coxe said in the court below,^ that "the restriction would follow the goods to this country if the original sale was made 1 57 Fed. Rep. 524. 2 Dickerson v. Matheson, 50 Fed. Rep. 73-77.