process was such that it would probably have been discovered by independent experiments in the manipulation of the ingredients of which the products of both parties were alike composed. The Grasselli Chemical Company, by its own conduct, has put itself in such a position that it may even lose the advantage of future independent experiments. It would be quite impossible hereafter to decide how much of the improvement in the product of the Grasselli Chemical Company would be attributable to its own independent efforts, and how much to the knowledge of Stone's process fraudulently acquired by it. Every doubt must be resolved against the parties to a fraudulent act. If the defendant thereby suffers, it suffers only by reason of having been a party to Goss's fraudulent disclosure of the secret. The legal principle governing the case is, in effect, the same that was applied by this court to a case of fraudulent intermixture of goods. Jewett v. Dringer, 30 N. J. Eq. 291. It was argued in behalf of the appellants that the disclosure of the complainants' secret, necessarily made during the trial, would render an injunction nugatory. This difficulty was expressed by Lord Eldon in an early case. Newberry v. James, 2 Merivale, 446, 451. To obviate it as far as possible, the testimony in this case was taken in camera, and care was taken to print only enough copies of this portion of the evidence to supply the members of the court. It has not been found necessary in this opinion to describe the process, and we see no reason why this disclosure to the Court, necessarily made for the purpose of the case, should deprive the complainants of their right to relief. The defendants were already possessed of the secret, and they cannot now take advantage of a disclosure made in order to secure relief against them. Such a disclosure is no publication to the world, and, although it may endanger the complainants' secret, it does not deprive them of the right to enjoin the defendants from making use of it. The doubts felt by Lord Eldon have not prevented the courts from giving such protection as they could in the later cases cited above. The decree should be affirmed, with costs. 218. H. B. WIGGINS' SONS' COMPANY v. COTT-A-LAP COMPANY UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT, DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT. 1909 169 Fed. 150 IN EQUITY. On motion for preliminary injunction. Edwin J. Prindle, for complainant. Henry C. White and Leonard M. Daggett, for defendant. PLATT, District Judge. The bill herein was filed March 11, 1909, and upon affidavits accompanying the same a restraining order was granted. The motion now to be decided was heard April 13th upon more elaborate affidavits. The motion asks for an order enjoining * the defendant during the pendency of the suit from "receiving or seeking to receive, or acquiring or seeking to acquire, from Robert W. Cornelison, any formula, process, or mechanical device or other manufacturing expedient" of the complainant, and from using the same in the manufacture of wall coverings. The evidence shows that Cornelison is a consulting chemist, and as such was employed by the complainant in its business at Bloomfield, N. J., for a number of years. Under such employment his relations with the complainant were confidential and many secrets of the business came into his possession. The only secret specifically exploited is the formula for the backing upon the wall coverings and the process of applying such backing. The complainant claims that it owns a secret formula and process by which uniform backings of two colors only, one for the lighter and one for the darker faces, can be used on all wall coverings of the kinds made by it. He says that his backings will not penetrate to the face of the coverings, and because of that fact he can restrict the number of colors used on the backs as he does. This formula and process tends, he says, to promote economy and efficiency of manufacture. In the case at bar there is a contract about the employment in which Cornelison agrees not to disclose trade secrets, but the law about such secrets is too plain to require extended comment. If one person has a trade secret which is valuable to him, and another person enters into confidential employment with him in and about the business which demands the use of that secret, and by such employment learns the secret, he cannot utilize this secret knowledge to the disadvantage of his employer. If he does so, he robs his employer. That is the contract relationship between them, and it makes no difference whether it is expressed in writing or not. If not expressed, it will be implied. In the case under discussion there is no doubt about the confidential employment and possession of trade secrets by Cornelison. He has now left the employment, and carries the secrets with him. He has accepted employment with a rival manufacturer of wall coverings. The exact question before me is whether such a hiring of him by the rival warrants a Court of Equity in resorting to so drastic a measure as the use of the injunctive power to prevent that rival from acquiring that secret knowledge. I cannot think that it does, unless the circumstances surrounding the hiring are such as to persuade one that the ulterior purpose in such hiring is evil. It appears that long ago two different managers of the defendant's business, which was then owned largely by other people, made efforts to learn the complainant's secrets by hiring from it men who knew some of the secrets. The defendant as then organized disavowed responsibility for the acts of its managers, and harmony seems to have reigned, as thoroughly as harmony can be expected to exist between avowed rivals, for a long time thereafter. The defendant as now organized and Dr. Cornelison state explicitly that there is no intention to derive any benefit from the doctor's secret knowledge gained while in the complainant's employ. If the injunction issues, it means that hereafter no man can work for one and learn his business secrets, and after leaving that employment engage himself to a rival in business, without carrying on his back into that business the injunctive mandate of a Court of Equity. There is nothing whatever in the facts of this case, except opportunity to do wrong and a suspicion in the mind of the rival that wrong will be done. The remedy asked for is an extraordinary one, and should not be lightly indulged in. The chancellor ought never to come into such a frame of mind that he assumes human nature to be essentially and inherently evil. Furthermore, the danger of irreparable injury is not manifest. Whether the secrets are given away or not can never be positively known, except by inspection of defendant's goods hereafter to be made. Whenever the outcome shall warrant it, the road to injunctive relief is plainly marked and easily followed. Upon such facts as have been brought to my attention it is my duty to deny the motion for an injunction.1 SUB-TOPIC B. USE OF PATENTED INVENTION (BY STATUTE) 219. WILLIAM C. ROBINSON. The Law of Patents for Useful Inventions. (1890. Vol. I, §§ 24-40, in part.) The relations of an inventor and the public to an unpatented invention first demand attention. In its earliest stage this invention is a mere addition to the stock of ideas possessed by the inventor. . . In order, therefore, to retain exclusive ownership of his idea, he must withhold its material embodiment from observation; and, as long as he can do this, the invention is as truly his by natural right as if it never had been thus externally expressed. But with his submission of the tangible result of his idea to the inspection of others, in such a manner that the idea itself becomes apparent, his control over it is gone. An idea once communicated can no longer be exclusively appropriated and enjoyed. Every one who receives it possesses it in the same degree as if he alone had apprehended it, and its inventor has no power to re 1 [PROBLEMS: A former manager, in the last year of his service as such, established a rival business at another place and sent circulars to his employer's customers whose names were contained in an order book to which he had access whilst so employed, and of which he made a copy without the knowledge or consent of his employer. Is this an infringement of a trade secret? (Robb v. Green, 98 Law Times, N. s. 569.) NOTES: "Disclosure of trade secrets." (H. L. R., XI, 262.) "Trade secrets: nature of right acquired by purchaser." (H. L. R., XVII, 206.) 66 Nature of right in trade secrets." (H. L. R., XX, 143, 156.) "Trade-Secrets - Injunction against divulging." (M. L. R. IV, 402.)] CHAPTERS ON THE JURAL NATURE AND ETHICAL BASIS OF THIS RIGHT: see the citations in the footnote to No. 172, ante. strain him from its practical and useful application. Under the laws of nature the exclusive public use of an invention is thus impossible, and hence there is no natural right to such a use. The inventor, who voluntarily discloses his invention to the public, necessarily and freely dedicates it to the public; and that which formerly was his alone by virtue of his sole possession becomes by universal possession the common property of all mankind. The natural right of the public to appropriate all new ideas that may be voluntarily disclosed is no less evident than that of the inventor to conceal them. It is a law of nature that men should profit by the discoveries and inventions of each other. This is the law which binds society together, and in obedience to which lies all the possibilities of moral, intellectual, and material advancement. No man lives, or can live, for himself alone. Every improvement he can make in his appearance, habits, manners, or affairs becomes a guide and stimulus to others, by following which they also can improve themselves in person or estate. To benefit by the discoveries of his fellow-men is thus not only a natural right, it is also the natural duty which every man owes to himself and to society; and the mutual, universal progress thence resulting is the fulfilment of the earthly destiny of the human race. . . . Perhaps no recognition of this inherent public right is clearer and more positive than that contained in the very law by which the patent privilege is created. It has always been a fundamental doctrine of that law that if the public once became possessed of the inventor's secret their right to use it could never thereafter be restrained. What should amount to such possession has, it is true, at different times been differently determined. In the earlier English cases it was held that any knowledge of the invention by the public before the granting of the patent vested it inalienably in them. Wood v. Zimmer (1815), 1 Web. 44, note; Cornish v. Keene (1835), 1 Web. 501. Modern legislation in the United States, on the other hand, permits the inventor to publicly use and sell his invention for two years before applying for a patent without thereby delivering it into their possession. But the principle remains the same, and in every aspect of it is enforced by the Courts, that whenever the inventor permits the invention to pass beyond the legally defined limits of his exclusive possession, his right to it ceases and the right of all mankind to it begins. See also Phillips, 422; Curtis, 101, 102. . . . Into the midst of this harmonious system of mutual rights and duties the patent privilege intrudes itself as a disturbing element. . . . It temporarily deprives the human race of its right to profit by the labors and discoveries of the individual, except upon such terms as he may see fit to impose. It locks up, under the control of the inventor, the physical fact or law which he applies, and gives him as complete dominion over it as if he and not Almighty God were its creator, and as if his advantage and not that of mankind in general were the object for which this attribute or element itself was made. . . ... The right of an inventor to a patent depends entirely upon the provisions of positive law. . . . This proposition is as correct in reference to the English patent system as in reference to our own. Whatever considerations of private justice or of public policy may have sustained the grant of letters-patent at common law, the statute of James I. abolished all such grants except in certain special cases. . . . In A. D. 1623, the famous Statute against Monopolies (21 Jac. I, ch. 3) was enacted by Parliament and received the sanction of the king. By this statute all past monopolies were abolished, and the power of the Crown to grant them in the future was explicitly denied, except in cases where such grants had been or should be made to the inventors of new manufactures, conferring upon them the exclusive privilege of practising such inventions for a limited period of time. . . . However valuable his discovery, however meritorious the service he has thereby rendered to the public, unless his invention falls within the scope of these provisions, it becomes, immediately upon its disclosure, the property of all mankind. That in peculiar cases great apparent hardship results from an adherence to this rule is no doubt true; but such exceptional evils necessarily attend all regulations which depart from the great principles of natural law, and seek by arbitrary measures to promote the common good. . . . Regarded, therefore, in its simplest and most abstract form, the patent privilege is a true restriction of pre-existing public rights. It may not, and ordinarily it does not, take away from the people the actual enjoyment of any benefit which they already had in their possession, but it does prohibit their immediate exercise of that perpetual and natural right by virtue of which every new discovery, when openly practised or proclaimed, becomes at once the possession and the property of all... ... The extent to which the patent privilege invades these natural rights and duties appears still more clearly on considering the fact that such privileges are granted only to a very small class of inventors. In some degree probably every sane person of mature age is an inventor. By accident or by the efforts of his genius he discovers something new in one or more of the innumerable departments of human affairs, by which his own condition, as well as that of other men, is substantially improved. Not only the scholar in his closet, the explorer in the ocean or the wilderness, and the artisan in his work-shop, but every other man whose faculties are occupied with any form of labor, or with any kind of rational amusement, makes some addition to the common stock of useful knowledge, and aids in the advancement of his race. If each of these were privileged to appropriate to himself, for the time being, the entire advantage of his own discovery, the relation of the individual inventor to the whole body of inventors would corre spond more closely with the principles of natural justice. But, on the contrary, the field of patentable invention is comparatively narrow. . . . Under the statute of James I. a patent privilege is grantable only to protect a "new manner of manufacture." The Court interpreted this phrase as including: (1) New substances or compositions of substances; (2) new mechanisms or combinations of mechanisms; (3) new methods or processes of operating, whereby substantial or mechanical results were produced. Boulton v. Bull (1795), 2 H. Bl. 463 (492). Under the Acts of Congress only “an art, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or design, or some improvement therein," can be thus privileged. . . . By far the greater and the most useful portion of human discoveries lie outside the domain of these exclusive privileges. The general phenomena and laws of matter, the methods of agriculture and commerce, the metaphysical and moral truths, and all other inventions which do not relate to the industrial arts, belong at once, upon their publications, to all mankind. Of every one of these the privileged inventor may avail himself as freely as their first discoverer. But because his invention chances to fall within the protected field he can enjoy it in its full extent, and yet withhold it from the general fund of knowledge. . . The nature of the patent privilege, as thus disclosed by its effects on the relations of the inventor and the public toward the invention, proves that it possesses both the characteristics of a true monopoly: (1) It confers on the inventor an inclusive right to which he is not naturally entitled, and which he could neither claim nor enforce except through the arbitrary interposition of the law; (2) it restricts the public in its enjoyment of three invaluable natural rights, without |