EMPLOYMENT OF AN ENGINEER 29 



injunction was granted to restrain the use of a secret in the 

 compounding of a medicine not being the subject of a patent, 

 and to restrain the sale of such medicine by a defendant who 

 acquired a knowledge of the secret in violation of the contract 

 with the party by whom it was communicated, and in breach 

 of trust and confidence. It was also established by that case 

 that the plaintiff, not having the privileges of a patentee, might 

 have no title to be protected in the exclusive manufacture and 

 sale of the medicine against all the world, yet he might, 

 notwithstanding, have a good title to protection against the 

 particular defendant. 



The law on the subject was more clearly enunciated in the 

 more recent case of Robb v. Green, 1895, 2 Q. B. 1. The 

 defendant, being employed by the plaintiff as manager of his 

 business, secretly copied from his master's order-book a list of 

 the names and addresses of the customers, with the intention 

 of using it for the purpose of soliciting orders from them 

 after he had left the plaintiff's service and set up a similar 

 business on his own account. Subsequently, his service with 

 the plaintiff having terminated, he did so use the list. It 

 was decided that it was an implied term of the contract of 

 service that the defendant would not use, to the detriment of 

 the plaintiff, information to which he had access in the course 

 of the service, and therefore that the defendant was liable for 

 any loss caused to the plaintiff by reason of the breach. In 

 the course of his judgment in this case, Mr. Justice Hawkins 

 said : " It is good law that a servant, havinjg left his master, 

 may, unless restrained by contract, lawfully set up in the same 

 line of business as his late master, and in the same locality ; and 

 that he may, without fear of legal consequences, canvass for 

 the custom of his late master's customers, whose names and 

 addresses he has learned bond fide accidentally during the 

 period of his service. . . . But here we are dealing with a 

 flagrant breach of trust during service, with intent to reap the 

 advantage contemplated afterwards. In such a case, too, it 

 seems to me that the fraud in service with intent to use after- 

 wards, and the use afterwards, are both discountenanced by 

 law. The breach of confidence in service can hardly be said 

 to be a duty of imperfect obligation, for the law will imply a 

 promise to perform it ; and the utilisation of the fraud cannot 

 be legalised by the fact that, though that utilisation was con- 

 templated when the fraud was committed, the relation of 



