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Chappell & Co Ltd v The Nestlé Co Ltd

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Chappell & Co Ltd v The Nestlé Co Ltd [1959] 2 All ER 701
House of Lords Nestlé, manufacturers of wrapped chocolate bars, advertised for sale, as part of an advertising campaign, the record 'Rockin' Shoes'. The price of the record was 1s 6d plus three wrappings from their 6d chocolate bars. Chappell, who were the sole licensees of the copyright of 'Rockin' Shoes', claimed that Nestlé had infringed their copyright and sought injunction and damages. Nestlé claimed that they were entitled to supply records without the permission or license of the appellants because they were authorized to do so by the Copyright Act 1956 s.8 which permitted them to sell the records provided they paid to the copyright owner 'six and one quarter per …show more content…

I do not see why the possibility that, in some cases, the acquisition of the wrappers did not directly benefit the respondents Nestlé should require us to exclude from consideration the cases where it did; and even where there was no direct benefit from the acquisition of the wrappers there may have been an indirect benefit by way of advertisement. ... But where the qualification is the doing of something of value to the seller, and where the qualification only suffices for one sale and must be re-acquired before another sale, I find it hard to regard the repeated acquisitions of the qualification as anything other than parts of the consideration for the sales. The purchaser of records had to send three wrappers for each record, so he had first to acquire them. The acquisition of wrappers by him was, at least in many cases, of direct benefit to the respondents Nestlé, and required expenditure by the acquirer which he might not otherwise have incurred. To my mind, the acquiring and delivering of the wrappers was certainly part of the consideration in these cases, and I see no good reason for drawing a distinction between these and other cases. Lord Somervell of Harrow The question, then, is whether the three wrappers were part of the consideration or, as Jenkins LJ, held, a condition of making the purchase, like a ticket entitling a member to buy at a co-operative store. I think that they are

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