Trading in UK Law

As the whole doctrine of restraint of trade is based on public policy its application ought to depend less on legal niceties or theoretical possibilities than on the practical effect of a restraint in hampering that freedom which it is the policy of the law to protect.

It was the sterilising of a man's capacity for work and not its absorption that underlay the objection to restraint of trade. This is the rationale of Young v. Timmins 148 E.R. 1446 where a brass foundry was during the contract sterilised so that it could only work for a party who might choose not to absorb its output at all but to go to other foundries, with the result that the foundry was completely at the mercy of the other party and might remain idle and unsupported.

When a contract only ties the parties during the continuance of the contract, and the negative ties are only those which are incidental and normal to the positive commercial arrangements at which the contract aims, even though those ties exclude all dealings with others, there is no restraint of trade within the meaning of the doctrine and no question of reasonableness arises.

This is not a mere transaction in property, nor a mere transaction between owners of property: it is essentially a trade agreement between traders. Finally the agreement is not of a character which, by the pressure of negotiation and competition, has passed into acceptance or into a balance of interest between the parties or between the parties and their customers; the solus system is both too recent and too variable for this to be said.

Openness requires that the terms should be expressed fully, clearly and legibly, containing no concealed pitfalls or traps. Fair dealing requires that a supplier should not, whether deliberately or unconsciously, take advantage of the consumer's necessity, indigence, lack of experience, unfamiliarity with the subject matter of the contract, weak bargaining position or any other factor listed in or analogous to those listed in Schedule 2 of the regulations.

The directive made provision for a dual system of ex casu challenges and pre-emptive or collective challenges by appropriate bodies: see article 7. This system was domestically enacted in the 1994 Regulations, with the Director General of Fair Trading as the administering official to investigate and take action on complaints: see regulation 8. The 1999 Regulations extended the system of enforcement by including other bodies as qualified to undertake pre-emptive challenges.

A contract in restraint of trade is one in which a party (the covenanter) agrees with any other party (the covenantee) to restrict his liberty in the future to carry on trade with other persons not parties to the contract in such manner as he chooses.