Manufacturer dealer agreement

Definition

A right to sell a maker's line, which can exist with nothing signed and may not survive a sale.

Why It Matters

Wisconsin's dealership law carries no product limit: a dealership is any contract or agreement, expressed or implied, oral or written, granting a person the right to sell or distribute goods, where a community of interest exists. No grantor may terminate, fail to renew or substantially change the competitive circumstances without good cause, the burden of proving it sits on the grantor, and ninety days' notice with sixty to cure is owed. The chapter's effect may not be varied by contract. Its reach over this trade is settled: the state's supreme court sent a distributor's claim to a jury against a Madison maker of humidifiers, air cleaners and thermostats, on a relationship with no written agreement at all. So diligence reads the course of dealing, and the risk at closing runs the other way from the one buyers expect: a transfer can extinguish the protection the seller enjoyed.