Matter of the Application of Bookbinder's Restaurant, Inc

240 F.2d 365, 44 C.C.P.A. 731
CourtCourt of Customs and Patent Appeals
DecidedJanuary 9, 1957
DocketPatent Appeals 6222
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 240 F.2d 365 (Matter of the Application of Bookbinder's Restaurant, Inc) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Customs and Patent Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Matter of the Application of Bookbinder's Restaurant, Inc, 240 F.2d 365, 44 C.C.P.A. 731 (ccpa 1957).

Opinion

O’CONNELL, Judge.

This is an appeal from the decision of the Commissioner of Patents, 103 U.S.P.Q. 274, affirming the action of the Examiner of Trademarks in refusing registration to the appellant of “Old Original Bookbinders” as a sex-vice mark on the Principal Register for services described • as “restaux'ant, catering and banquet services.” The record indicates that appellant operates a single restaurant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that the services relied on are rendered in that city.

Registration was refused solely on the grouxxd that the services in question are not “rendered in commerce,” as required by sections 3 and 45 of the Trademark Act of 1946, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1051 et seq. As defined in section 45 “commerce” means “all commerce which may lawfully be regulated by Congress.” The issue to be determined here, therefore, is whether the rendering of restaurant, catering and banquet services entirely within one state, involves “commex-ce which may lawfully be regulated by Congress” within the meaning of the Act.

The interstate commerce clause of the Constitution has proved to be one of the most difficult to interpret, and the decisions construing it have not been uni-form. A recent case in point is Fairway Foods, Inc., v. Fairway Markets, Inc., 9 Cir., 227 F.2d 193, 197, involving the application of the pi-ovisions of the Trademark Act of 1946 to a single retail grocery business. In its decision the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said:

“While it is true that activities which in isolation might be deemed local, may affect commerce due to interfacings of business across state lines, ixx absence of a showing that the business is part of a coordinated interstate system substantially affecting commerce, the activities of retail grocers purchasing and selling their wax-es exclusively intrastate are not a pennissible field for Congressional regulation under the Commerce power.”

Appellant ax-gues that its services affect interstate commex-ce because its restaux'ant is located near the Pennsylvania-New Jersey boundary and people travel back and forth between those states, as well as between Delaware and Pennsylvania, for the purpose of obtaining such services.

The question as to what intrastate commerce affects interstate commerce in such a way as to justify Congress in regulating it was fully considered by the Supreme Court in the case of Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United *367 States, 295 U.S. 485, 25 S.Ct. 837, 850, 79 L.Ed. 1570, in which it was held that the slaughtering, in one state, of poultry imported from another was not commerce which could lawfully be regulated by Congress. In that decision the court said:

“In determining how far the federal government may go in controlling intrastate transactions upon the ground that they ‘affect’ interstate commerce, there is a necessary and well-established distinction between direct and indirect effects. The precise line can be drawn only as individual cases arise, but the distinction is clear in principle. * * But where the effect of intrastate transactions upon interstate commerce is merely indirect, such transactions remain within the domain of state power. If the commerce clause were construed to reach all enterprises and transactions which could be said to have an indirect effect upon interstate commerce, the federal authority would embrace practically all the activities of the people, and the authority of the state over its domestic concerns would exist only by sufferance of the federal government.”

Similarly in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615, 624, 81 L.Ed. 893, the same court said:

“« * Undoubtedly the scope of this power must be considered in the light of our dual system of government and may not be extended so as to embrace effects upon interstate commerce so indirect and remote that to embrace them, in view of our complex society, would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government. The question is necessarily one of degree.”

It has been held that services which are essential to the production of goods which are transported in interstate commerce may be regulated by Congress under the interstate commerce clause, even though they are performed entirely within one state, and in Martino v. Michigan Window Cleaning Co., 327 U.S. 173, 66 S.Ct. 379, 90 L.Ed. 603, cited by appellant, that same principle was applied to the washing of windows in a building used primarily in the production of such goods. On the other hand, in 10 East 40th St. Bldg., Inc., v. Callus, 325 U.S. 578, 65 S.Ct. 1227, 89 L.Ed. 1806, it was held that maintenance services in a building containing a substantial number of offices devoted to interstate commerce, but more than half of the space being devoted to other uses, were not subject to such regulation.

It is clear from the foregoing cases that the authority of Congress, under the interstate commerce clause, to regulate intrastate commerce is limited to such intrastate commerce as has a direct effect upon interstate commerce. Generally speaking, only intrastate commerce which is necessary to the production or movement of goods in interstate commerce, or which serves materially to hamper or impede such commerce has been held to be subject to such regulation.

Appellant on the other hand relies on Bowles v. 870 Seventh Avenue Corp., 2 Cir., 150 F.2d 819, as showing that the restaurant business may lawfully be regulated by Congress. That ease, however, involved emergency legislation enacted during World War II and was not based on the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. In the Fairway case, supra, it may be noted the court stated that since the decision in the Trade-Mark Cases, Kansas Pac. R. Co. v. Twombly, 1879, 100 U.S. 78, 82, 25 L.Ed. 550, “it has been established that Congress gains its power over trademarks under the Commerce clause of the Constitution.”

Appellant also argues that the registration and enforcement provisions of the 1946 Trademark Act must be tested by the same criteria, and cites Pagliero v. Wallace China Co., 198 F.2d 339, 341 and Stauffer v. Exley, 184 F.2d 962, *368 both decided by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as showing that such enforcement may extend to intrastate commerce. It is clear, however, that the doctrine of those decisions is limited to intrastate commerce in which, in the words of the Pagliero decision, “there is present the requisite effect on interstate commerce.” We are of the opinion that such an effect has not been shown in the instant case.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
240 F.2d 365, 44 C.C.P.A. 731, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/matter-of-the-application-of-bookbinders-restaurant-inc-ccpa-1957.