Harlan F. Stone

“ When by a fair and free bargain a man sells something to another, it hardly lies in his mouth to say, 'I have sold you nothing.' It certainly offends the rudimentary sense of justice for courts to support one two purports to sell something to another in saying 'What I have sold you is worthless', even though he did not expressly promise that what he sold had worth. ”

“ In technical language, the sale of a patent means its assignment. Congress might have confined the right to exploit a patent solely to the patentee. Congress has acted on the contrary policy. Ever since the Act of February 21, 1793, 1 Stat. 318, Congress has sanctioned the right to assign patents, requiring only fulfillment of certain formalities. To be sure, Congress has not said in so many words that the seller of a patent-an assignor is subject like other sellers to the obligations of fair dealing. ”

“ It is suggested, also, that the public is harmed by removing the assignor from the ranks of actual or potential manufacturers of what is covered by the patent. But that is true of every case in which the assignor is barred from questioning the validity of his assignment. As against the loss to the public of one possible manufacturer is put the public policy of fair dealing between man and man. That is the meaning of the Formica doctrine. [1]
A machine that is not patentable because it is not novel is just as much part of the public domain as a machine on which the patent has expired. ”

“ The first of these reasons is that the law will not lend its aid in the enforcement of a contract by means of which a man may deprive himself of the possibility of earning a livelihood and deprive the public of the 'benefit of his labor.' The second, 'that such restraints tended to give * * * the beneficiary of such restraints, a monopoly of the trade, from which he had thus excluded one competitor, and by the same means might exclude others.' Taft, J., in United States v. ”