A post-sale restraint, also termed a post-sale restriction, as those terms are used in United States patent law and antitrust law, is a limitation that operates after a sale of goods to a purchaser has occurred and purports to restrain, restrict, or limit the scope of the buyer’s freedom to utilize, resell, or otherwise dispose of or take action regarding the sold goods. Such restraints have also been termed "equitable servitudes on chattels."
Support for the rule against enforcement of post-sale restraints has at times been rested on the common law's hostility to restraints on the alienation of chattels. "The right of alienation is one of the essential incidents of a right of general property in movables, and restraints upon alienation have been generally regarded as obnoxious to public policy, which is best subserved by great freedom of traffic in such things as pass from hand to hand. General restraint in the alienation of articles, things, chattels, except when a very special kind of property is involved, . . . have been generally held void."
Read more about Post-sale Restraint: Case Law
Famous quotes containing the word restraint:
“Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)