British Leyland Motor Corp. v. Armstrong Patents Co.
House of Lords
Citations	[1986] 1 A.C. 577, [1986] 1 All E.R. 850
Judges sitting	Lord Bridge Lord Templeman Lord Scarman Lord Edmund-Davies Lord Griffiths

British Leyland Motor Corp. v. Armstrong Patents Co.^[1] is a 1986 decision of the House of Lords concerning the doctrine of non-derogation from grants. This doctrine is comparable to, but somewhat broader than, the doctrine of legal estoppel, assignor estoppel, or estoppel by deed in U.S. law. Under the doctrine of non-derogation from grants a seller of realty or (after this decision) goods is not permitted to take any action (such as bringing an infringement action) that will lessen the value to the buyer of the thing sold.

Rear view of Leyland Marina showing tailpipe

The factual context of the Leyland case was that the owner of copyright in the tailpipe of a motor car (the Leyland "Marina"), having sold or authorized the sale of the motor car, sought to use the law against copyright infringement to prevent the aftermarket sale of replacement tailpipes to purchasers of those motor cars. The court considered the application of other possible legal doctrines--such as implied license or "some form of estoppel"--but rejected them in favor of non-derogation. Lord Bridge observed:

It seems to me that when one is considering machinery which is not the subject of any patent protection, it is unnecessary and may be misleading to introduce the concept of an implied license. The owner of a car must be entitled to do whatever is necessary to keep it in running order and to effect whatever repairs may be necessary in the most economical way possible. To derive this entitlement from an implied license granted by the original manufacturer seems to me quite artificial. It is a right inherent in the ownership of the car itself. There is an inconsistency between marketing cars and thereby creating whatever rights attach to their ownership on the one hand and acting to restrain the free exercise of those rights on the other. The law does not countenance such inconsistencies.

In his separate opinion, Lord Templeman pointed out that an implied license might be negatived by express language, under principles of freedom of contract, but that was not so when non-derogation instead is involved: “The right cannot be withheld by the manufacturer of the car by contract with the first purchaser and cannot be withheld from any subsequent owner.” That is, the nature of property makes the right inherent and not a matter of freedom of contract.

This case appears to be the first one extending the non-derogation doctrine from cases involving realty to cases involving personal property (chattels). Lord Templeman seems to have recognized this point in his opinion. After describing the operation of the principle in various types of case involving land, he stated: " I see no reason why the principle that a grantor will not be allowed to derogate from his grant [of land] by using property retained by him in such a way as to render property granted by him unfit or materially unfit for the purpose for which the grant was made should not apply to the sale of a car." This decision also re-affirmed the ruling in LB (Plastics) Ltd. v. Swish Products Ltd.,^[2] stating that the rule of the Swish decision must now be regarded as "settled law" (that is, that under UK copyright law a physical object is an infringing copy of a technical drawing depicting the object.

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