Law Dictionary Definitions

free on board.A mercantile-contract term allocating the rights and duties of the buyer and the seller of goods with respect to delivery, payment, and risk of loss, whereby the seller must clear the goods for export, and the buyer must arrange for transportation. • The seller’s delivery is complete (and the risk of loss passes…

free of all average.Maritime law. Insurance that covers a total loss only. — Abbr. FAA.[Blacks Law 8th]

free market.See open market under MARKET.[Blacks Law 8th]

Freeman–Walter–Abele test.Patents. An outmoded two-step judicial test for determining whether a claimed invention is an unpatentable mathematical algorithm. • The test looks first to whether an algorithm is explicit or inherent in the claim, and second to whether a patent would wholly preempt others from using the algorithm. In re Freeman, 573 F.2d 1237 (CCPA…

freeman. 1. A person who possesses and enjoys all the civil and political rights belonging to the people under a free government. 2. A person who is not a slave. 3.Hist. A member of a municipal corporation (a city or borough) who possesses full civic rights, esp. the right to vote. 4.Hist. A freeholder. Cf.…

free law.Hist. The civil rights enjoyed by a freeman (as opposed to a serf). • Free law could be forfeited if the freeman was convicted of treason or an infamous crime.[Blacks Law 8th]

free ice.Hist. Ice in navigable streams that does not belong to the adjacent riparian owner or to another with the right to appropriate it, but that belongs to the person who first appropriates it.[Blacks Law 8th]

freehold land society.(usu. pl.) Hist. A society in England created to enable mechanics, artisans, and other workers to buy at the lowest possible price freehold land with a sufficient yearly value to entitle the owner to the right to vote in the county in which the land was located.[Blacks Law 8th]

freehold interest.See FREEHOLD.[Blacks Law 8th]

freehold estate.See FREEHOLD.[Blacks Law 8th]