as if the subject-matter of his invention were entitled to the protection of a patent. . .

The only wrong which an inventor can sustain in respect to his entirely undisclosed inventions, is that by which his secret is wrested from him against his will. This wrong may be committed either by force or fraud. Through physical compulsion, in the form of violence or threats, he may be driven to divulge the idea which he would otherwise have concealed, and be thus deprived of that exclusive knowledge which rendered his property in this idea secure. Or by a forcible invasion of his premises, or the asportation of the device in which his idea is embodied, the same result may be effected. Or by deceit and imposition he may be induced to yield the secret which he intended to preserve, and lose beyond recovery that dominion over it which, in the nature of things, was previously his.

The remedies for this wrong, in whatever way it may be committed, must be sought in the local courts having jurisdiction over the defendant, and in the ordinary forms of civil or equity procedure. The tort involved in either of its methods calls for compensation in damages, which are to be measured by the ordinary rules followed in other civil actions, and into which the violation of the inventor's secret may enter as a necessary element. The power which the wrong-doer has acquired to work him further injury through the possession and employment of his idea of means demands the interference of a Court of Equity, enjoining the defendant against the use of the invention and the communication of its principles to others. By these remedies, although the secret cannot be restored to the inventor nor the knowledge of it be obliterated from the memory of the wrong-doer, the disastrous consequences of the wrong to the inventor may be averted, and his practical enjoyment of his property be henceforth secured.

The rights of an inventor in a secret invention, confidentially communicated to others, are capable of violation either on the part of those to whom it has never been disclosed by the inventor or on the part of those to whom he has entrusted it. With reference to the first class of persons it is still an entire secret, the knowledge of which they can obtain only by force or fraud. The wrongful acts by which they acquire possession of the secret are, therefore, as was stated in a preceding paragraph, torts to be compensated for in an action at law for damages, while the practical enjoyment of the stolen secret is prevented by injunction. With reference to the second class of persons the invention, though no longer secret, is known only for certain definite purposes, within the scope of which their employment of their knowledge must be confined. Any use of their knowledge for a different purpose, and any communication of it to others beyond the limits of the authority conferred upon them by the inventor, is a breach of trust, and an invasion of the rights expressly or impliedly reserved to him in the disclosure through which their own knowledge of the invention was obtained.

216. GRAY, J., in Peabody v. Norfolk (1868. 98 Mass. 452). It is the policy of the law, for the advantage of the public, to encourage and protect invention and commercial enterprise. If a man establishes a business and makes it valuable by his skill and attention, the good will of that business is recognized by the law as property. If he adopts and publicly uses a trademark, he has a remedy, either at law or in equity, against those who undertake to use it without his permission. If he makes a new and useful invention of any machine or composi

tion of matter, he may, upon filing in a public office a description which will enable an expert to understand and manufacture it, and this affording to all persons the means of ultimately availing themselves of it, obtain letters patent from the government securing to him its exclusive use and profit for a term of years. If he invents or discovers, and keeps secret, a process of manufacture, whether a proper subject for a patent or not, he has not indeed an exclusive right to it as against the public, or against those who in good faith acquire knowledge of it; but he has a property in it, which a Court of Chancery will protect against one who in violation of contract and breach of confidence undertakes to apply it to his own use, or to disclose it to third persons. The jurisdiction in equity to interfere by injunction to prevent such a breach of trust, when the injury would be irreparable and the remedy at law inadequate, is well established by authority.1

217. STONE v. GOSS

COURT OF ERRORS AND APPEALS OF NEW JERSEY. 1903

65 N. J. L. 756, 55 Atl. 736

APPEAL from Court of Chancery.

Bill by Albert H. Stone and others against John Goss and the Grasselli Chemical Company. Decree for complainants, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.

Cortlandt & R. Wayne Parker, for appellants. Charles W. Fuller, for respondents.

SWAYZE, J. This is a bill for an injunction to restrain Goss from divulging a secret process of the complainants for the manufacture of depilatories (compounds used to remove hair and wool from skins and hides), and to restrain the Grasselli Chemical Company from using or divulging any information derived from Goss with reference to the secret process. The vice chancellor advised a decree for the complainants. Goss was in the employ of the complainants from 1892 to 1901, during which time they had, by constant experiment, made improvements in the manufacture of depilatories, and had put upon the market what were called "Stone's XXX Depilatory" and "Stone's XXXX Depilatory." The ingredients out of which the depilatories were made were well known and had been in use for several years before 1892, but the depila

1[COCHRAN, J., in Hartman v. Park & Sons Co., post, No. 228:

The secret process and the medicine made under it are separate and distinct things, and each is a subject of ownership. One person may own one and another person the other. The question has been argued whether a sale of an article made under a secret process is a publication of the process. It is and it is not. It is, if and when one can by his own ingenuity ascertain therefrom the process by which it is made. Until he so ascertains it, there has been no publication of the process; and in the meantime the ownership of the secret and the right to its protection is as full and complete as if no sale had ever been made of the article embodying the secret process. But still, as stated, such article is not the process and the rights with reference to each are different.]

tories manufactured had not been entirely satisfactory until the complainants succeeded in producing the XXX and XXXX. The Grasselli Chemical Company, along with other branches of manufacture, was also engaged in the manufacture of depilatories from the same ingredients used by the complainants, and was their chief business rival. Some time in the year 1901, the Grasselli Chemical Company bought, through one of its agents, some of the complainants' XXX Depilatory, and caused a chemical analysis to be made, and thereafter conducted experiments with a view to the production of a depilatory equal in quality to the product of the complainants. In August, 1901, Goss became dissatisfied with his position with the complainants. He had received a letter two or three months before from Atteaux, a sales agent of the defendant company in Boston. About the middle of August, Goss wrote Atteaux, and by appointment met at Atteaux's office Grant, a director of the Grasselli Chemical Company. Goss fixes the date of this interview at about the middle of August, and, as he says he gave the complainants eight days' notice that he would leave their employ, and left September 3d, he apparently gave the notice after the interview with Grant. In the second week in September, he went into the employ of the Grasselli Company, in what was known as the sulphide department, which was the department concerned with the manufacture of depilatories. During the first two or three weeks he was in the employ of the Grasselli Company he did no work, but immediately upon his employment, Frazier, the superintendent of its plant at Tremley, questioned him "in regard to what he knew about the manufacture of depilatories," and Goss informed Frazier of the complainants' method of manufacture, and described fully the complainants' apparatus. Frazier reported to the defendant company the information obtained from Goss, with a sketch of the apparatus, and the manner in which it should be made and put up. This sketch was made by Frazier, and corrected by Goss. The Grasselli Company approved of Frazier's plan, and directed him to put up the shed to contain the apparatus. He was proceeding with this work when stopped by the injunction.

The complainants allege that Goss was under a contract with them. not to reveal the secrets of manufacture. Goss denies this contract. We agree with the vice chancellor that the contract is established by the weight of evidence. The right of a manufacturer, whose goods are made by an unpatented secret process, to protection by injunction against the divulging of his secret in a proper case, is now established by a wellconsidered line of cases in England and in several States. The leading case is Morrison v. Moat, 9 Hare, 241, 20 L. J. Eq. 513, decided by Vice Chancellor Turner in 1851, and affirmed in Court of Appeals by Lord Cranworth, 21 L. J. Ch. 248. The principle has since been applied to cases in various aspects in the English Courts. Merryweather v. Moore (1892) 2 Ch. 518, 61 L. J. Eq. 505; Lamb v. Evans (1892) 3 Ch. 462, 61 L. J. Eq. 681, affirmed on appeal, 62 L. J. Eq. 404. A leading case

in this country is Peabody v. Norfolk, 98 Mass. 452, 96 Am. Dec. 664. In New York the principle is established in Tabor v. Hoffmann, 118 N. Y. 30, 23 N. E. 12, 16 Am. St. Rep. 740; Eastman v. Reichenback (Sup.) 20 N. Y. Supp. 110; National Gum Co. v. Braendly (Sup.) 51 N. Y. Supp. 93; Little v. Gallus (Sup.) 57 N. Y. Supp. 104; Tode v. Gross, 127 N. Y. 480, 28 N. E. 469, 13 L. R. A. 652, 24 Am. St. Rep. 475. In Michigan it was adopted in a very well-considered opinion in O. & W. Thum Co. v. Tloczynski, 114 Mich. 149, 72 N. W. 140, 38 L. R. A. 200, 68 Am. St. Rep. 469. In Pennsylvania, Fralich v. Despar, 165 Pa. 24, 30 Atl. 521. In Indiana, Westervelt v. National Paper Co., 154 Ind. 673, 57 N. E. 552. In the Federal Courts, C. T. Simmons Medical Co. v. Simmons (C. C.) 81 Fed. 163. The rule has been applied in this State in the Court of Chancery by Chancellor Runyon in Salomon v. Hertz, 40 N. J. Eq. 400, 2 Atl. 379. Salomon v. Hertz, Peabody v. Norfolk, and O. & W. Thum Co. v. Tloczynski are the leading American cases. These cases establish the principle that employees of one having a trade secret, who are under an express contract, or a contract implied from their confidential relation to their employer, not to disclose that secret, will be enjoined from divulging the same to the injury of their employer, whether before or after they have left his employ; and that other persons who induce the employee to disclose the secret, knowing of his contract not to disclose the same, or knowing that his disclosure is in violation of the confidence reposed in him by his employer, will be enjoined from making any use of the information so obtained, although they might have reached the same result independently by their own experiments or efforts. We approve the principle thus established.

We find in this case, as already stated, that an express contract between the complainants and Goss for secrecy is proved. Two questions remain: (1) Did Stone possess a secret process for the manufacture of depilatories? (2) Did the Grasselli Chemical Company obtain knowledge of that secret process from Goss under such circumstances that it should be enjoined from making use of it?

1. The ingredients used in the manufacture of Stone's depilatories were well known, and had been used for that purpose for years before the XXX and XXXX were put upon the market, and the same ingredients were used by the Grasselli Chemical Company in the manufacture of a depilatory. It is urged that the only advantage possessed by the complainants arose out of skill in handling, and not out of a secret process, and that there was no secret either in the ingredients or in the method of compounding them. The complainants combined the ingredients by a different method from any other in use, and the result was a product of a different character. The complainants' process of manufacture was considerably more complicated than the defendants'. The secret consisted in a knowledge of the proper method of mixing the ingredients, and treating them, in order to produce a product of proper consistency. The difference between mere skill in manipulation and a

process of manufacture is illustrated by a recent case in the United States Supreme Court. Carnegie Steel Co. v. Cambria Iron Co., 185 U. S. 403, 22 Sup. Ct. 698, 46 L. Ed. 968. In this case the process which was held patentable consisted in retaining a quantity of molten iron in a reservoir, to serve as a basis for mixing the varying products of the blast furnaces preparatory to converting the same into steel. The difficulty to be overcome was a lack of uniformity in the molten metal. The use of a reservoir in which the varying products of the blast furnaces had been mixed was known prior to the patent involved in that case, but the importance of always maintaining in the reservoir a sufficient quantity of molten metal to "dominate" (to use the Court's expression) the whole mass had not been before appreciated. The majority of the Court held that the process was therefore patentable. There the ingredients were the same, the idea of mixing the molten metal of different qualities was not new, and the only novelty was the retention in the reservoir of a "dominant mass" sufficiently large to control the average character of the product from time to time. If such an improvement was patentable, it is clear that a process of treating the ingredients, as complicated as that involved in the present case, resulting in a product of novel character, is a process which, if kept secret, is entitled to the protection of the Court. The evidence is convincing that the complainants made efforts to keep the process secret, and had succeeded until Goss revealed the secret to the Grasselli Chemical Company. Since we are satisfied that Stone had a secret process of manufacturing a depilatory, and that Goss was under a contractual obligation not to disclose the secret, the complainants are clearly entitled to an injunction against Goss. The question remains whether the injunction should go also against the Grasselli Chemical Company.

2. The evidence satisfies us that the Grasselli Chemical Company knew that Stone was manufacturing a superior article to its own: that it had been for some time trying to discover Stone's method of manufacture; that it had entered into correspondence with Goss and employed him while he was still in Stone's service; and that, immediately upon his coming into the employ of the defendant company, it sought through Frazier to learn Stone's secret, and, having learned it, was about to make use of it to manufacture a similar substance by Stone's process, to be sold in competition with his. These facts leave no doubt that the Grasselli Chemical Company acted in fraud of Stone's rights in the effort to learn his secret by inducing his employee to divulge the same. Even though they did not know of the contract, they must have known of the confidential character of Stone's business, and the confidential character of the relation between him and his employees. The defendant company is a party to Goss's fraudulent disclosure of the secret, and the complainants were entitled to an injunction restraining the Grasselli Chemical Company from making any use of the information thus obtained from Goss. The injunction should not be refused because the