Dempsey v. Dobson

Citations

• 174 Pa. 122
• 34 A. 459
• 1896 Pa. LEXIS 858

Syllabus

<p>Master and servant — Employer and employee — Inventions—Formula used in manufactures.</p> <p>If one employed by another experiments at the expense of his employer and for his use with a view to the immediate use of the results of such experiments in his employer’s business, the recipes and formulae resulting from such experiments belong to the employer so far as to gire him the right to use the same.</p> <p>A color mixer employed in a carpet factory was not an independent contractor, but his wages were adjusted according to his skill and experience. It was his duty to prepare the dyes or colors so as to reproduce in the carpet all the shades indicated by the design. After his work was approved by the designer, it was his duty to enter in a book called a “ Color Book ” the number of the carpet and the formula by which each shade of color used in its manufacture was produced, tie was also required to keep a book in which a piece of yarn, colored according to the formula for each shade in the carpet, was preserved with the number of the carpet to which the shades belonged. When the colors were prepared they were put into large pitchers, each labeled with the formula or recipe it contained. Held, (1) that the recipes prepared by the color mixer for the use of his employers in the manufacture of their carpets belonged to them so far at least as to give them the right to continue the use of the various colors and shades produced by them; (2) that the mixer had a right if he chose so to do to preserve the recipes for his own use in the future, but his right was not an exclusive one as against his employers; (3) that if the color mixer did not keep the books which it was his duty to keep, but kept private books of his own in which he recorded the recipes, his employers had a right to a copy of their own recipes when he retired from their employment ; (4) that in an action by the mixer to recover damages for the detention of his books, the value of the recipes in the book