The court considered the nature of an equitable assignment of a copyright. Phillimore LJ opined said: ‘The assignment does, however, operate as a contract to assign if and when the property comes into existence, and to use the words of [Jessel M.R.], when it come into existence, equity, treating as done that which ought to be done, fastens upon that property, and the contract to assign thus becomes a complete assignment.
This is intelligible and workable if nothing happens between the date of the assignment (construed as a contract to assign) and the date when the property comes into existence; but if in the intervening period something happens which may affect the contract, as, for instance, a statutory discharge of the assignor from all his obligations, does the contract to assign still become in due course a complete assignment?
. . If the assurance rest in contract and if by consequence the only way in which equity fastens upon the property be by the operation of the doctrine of specific performance, then the liability under the contract would be, as it seems to me, discharged by bankruptcy.
. . In order that the assignment may survive and have its effect it must give to the assignee something more than a mere right in contract, something in the nature of an estate or interest.’
Swinfen Eady LJ said: ‘an agreement to charge future property creates an immediate charge upon the property coming into existence, independently of the contract to execute some further charge, and cannot be said to rest in contract only.’
Bankes LJ said ‘that equity regarded an assignment for value of future-acquired property as containing an enforceable security as against the property assigned quite independent of the personal obligation of the assignor arising out of his imported covenant to assign’.
Judges:
Phillimore LJ, Swinfen Eady LJ, Bankes LJ
Citations:
[1915] 2 Ch 345
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – B4U Network (Europe) Ltd v Performing Right Society Ltd CA 16-Oct-2013
Composers had entered an agreement with the respondent, assigning all copyrights in their works to the respondent. The respondent asserted also an equitable assignment of all future works. The appellant asserted that the rights in the particular . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property, Equity
Updated: 07 October 2022; Ref: scu.541518