The Court was asked to ascertain the particular items making up the subject matter of an assignment of copyright in, inter alia, ‘four golfing subjects’ as set out in a receipt.
Held: Neville J said: ‘Then it is said that there is not a sufficient description of the subject-matter of the memorandum to be found in it, the subject being ‘four golfing subjects.’ Now it is said that I cannot or that I ought not to admit parol evidence to identify those four golfing subjects, and that if I do not do that I cannot tell what particular golfing subjects were intended and referred to in the document itself. It appears to me that the cases that have been referred to shew clearly that I am entitled to receive evidence for the purpose of identifying the subject-matter of the contract. I think that both Shardlow v. Cotterell [(1881) 20 Ch. D. 90] and Plant v. Bourne [[1897] 2 Ch. 281] are authorities to the effect that parol evidence to identify the subject-matter of a contract is admissible. Here I think there can be no doubt upon the construction of the memorandum itself that four particular golfing subjects are referred to, and it seems to me that the difficulty in both the cases that I have referred to which was under consideration was whether the terms of the agreement indicated that no particular property was intended, but something which might be selected by one of the parties hereafter. In one case it was twenty-four acres of land in such and such a parish, and it was said there that you could not say that that was an agreement to sell any particular twenty-four acres, and it was held that you could shew by parol evidence that a certain twenty-four acres had been marked out and that they were the subject-matter of the contract between the vendor and the purchaser. I think therefore in this case I am entitled to hear evidence as to what the four golfing subjects purchased by the plaintiffs from Mr. Thomas were. In my opinion the evidence shews that those four golfing subjects included the picture ‘Thirteen Down.’ That is the subject-matter of the present action. In my opinion, therefore, the assignment of the copyright is sufficiently shewn by the memorandum in writing signed by the proper party.’
Judges:
Neville J
Citations:
[1914] 2 Ch 566
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Lehman Brothers International (Europe) v Exotix Partners Llp ChD 9-Sep-2019
The parties had contracted to trade global depository notes issued by the Peruvian government. Each made mistakes as to their true value, thinking them scraps worth a few thousand dollars, whereas their true value was over $8m. On the defendant . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 13 September 2022; Ref: scu.645466
