Oneida Community, Ltd. v. Oneida Game Trap Co.

168 A.D. 769, 154 N.Y.S. 391, 1915 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8989
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedJuly 1, 1915
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 168 A.D. 769 (Oneida Community, Ltd. v. Oneida Game Trap Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Oneida Community, Ltd. v. Oneida Game Trap Co., 168 A.D. 769, 154 N.Y.S. 391, 1915 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8989 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1915).

Opinion

Woodward, J.:

The plaintiff, the Oneida Oommunity, Limited, and its predecessors, has manufactured game traps for a period of sixty years, and it appears from the evidence that it now produces and sells about ninety-two per cent of all the game traps used in the world, and about eighty per cent of the traps used in the United States. It has factories located at a settlement known as Sherrill, adjoining the corporate limits of the city of Oneida, and at Niagara Falls, Ontario, and having a commanding position in the industry of manufacturing game traps, it must be obvious that it has a good will which would. be of great value, and which would naturally he desired by a competitor attempting to establish a like business. The evidence in the case clearly establishes the existence of this good will; it shows conclusively that the Oneida Oommunity, Limited, game traps have an established reputation; that they are well known to the trade and to the users of traps, and that all competitors have found it difficult to replace the plaintiff in the estimate of those engaged in trapping either professionally or as an incident to the life of farmer boys. Having this established business, with its immensely valuable good will, which facts are important to be kept in mind in dealing with the evidence in this case, the plaintiff has brought this action to restrain the defendant from an infringement of its registered trade mark, as well as from an unfair competition, and for damages. It has succeeded in part, in- that the court has given judgment in its favor; hut this the plaintiff deems inadequate, and has appealed from the judgment, while the defend[771]*771ant appeals from so much of it as awards any relief whatever to the plaintiff.

It is conceded on the part of the defendant that the plaintiff had heretofore registered the word “ Oneida” as a part of its trade mark Oneida Community,” under the ten-year clause of the act of Congress of February 20, 1905, and that this trade mark was used by the plaintiff in interstate and foreign commerce and in trade with the Indian tribes, but it is urged that the court was without jurisdiction to construe or enforce this Federal statute, and, as this must have a very important bearing upon the proper disposition of this litigation, it is important that this jurisdictional question be disposed of now. The argument of the defendant is that the question of the effect of the ten-year clause upon the plaintiff’s rights was not a common-law question; that it depended entirely upon the Federal statute and gave an entirely new cause of action in addition to all causes of action of which the State courts then had jurisdiction; that this new and additional cause of action being created by, and entirely dependent upon, a Federal statute, must be construed and enforced by the Federal courts unless some new and additional authority was directly given to the State courts, and this has not been done. Dudley v. Mayhem (3 N. Y. 1); Continental Store Service Co. v. Clark (100 id. 370), and various other cases are cited as authority for this proposition, but we are of the opinion that the principles enunciated in those cases do not support the defendant’s contention. The case of Dudley v. Mayhem (supra) involved a patent right, and it was held that the courts of this State have no jurisdiction to entertain a suit instituted to restrain the infringement of a patent right, which is undoubtedly the law. (Robb v. Connolly, 111 U. S. 624, 636.) But the court in that same case pointed out that while it was true that where a statute confers a right and prescribes adequate means of protecting it, the proprietor of the right is confined to the statutory remedy; where the statute creating the right omits to provide against its infringement the remedy may be pursued at large by any appropriate action or proceeding. This is the principle involved in the case now under consideration, and as the statute has not provided an exclusive remedy, we are of the opinion that it [772]*772cannot be held that the court was without jurisdiction simply because the statute gives jurisdiction to the Federal courts. Trade marks do not come within that clause of the Federal Constitution (Art. 1, § 8, subd. 8) which provides that Congress shall have power “ to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries, ” but in so far as it is attempted, finds its authority under the provision (Art, 1, § 8, subd. 3) that Congress shall have power “ to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” The reasons which might exclude patent rights from the jurisdiction of State courts have no application to a case such as is here presented under the power of the Federal government to deal with interstate commerce. The statute here under consideration provides (33 U. S. Stat. at Large, 724, § 1, as amd. by 34 id. 168, 169, chap. 2081, § 1) that “the owner of a trade-mark used in commerce with foreign nations, or among the several States, or with Indian tribes,” may cause the same to be registered; and recognizing the general principle that geographical names cannot be made the subject of trade marks, it is provided: “That nothing herein shall prevent the registration of any mark used by the applicant or his predecessors, or by those from whom title to the mark is derived, in commerce with foreign nations or among the several States or with Indian tribes, which was in actual and exclusive use as a trade-mark of the applicant, or his predecessors from whom he derived title, for ten years next preceding February twentieth, nineteen hundred and five” (33 U. S. Stat. at Large, 725, 726, § 5, as amd. by 34 id. 1251, 1252, chap. 2573, § 1; 36 id. 918, 919, chap. 113, and 37 id. 649, chap. 7), and it was held in Thaddeus Davids Co. v. Davids (233 U. S. 461) that this clause was intended to extend the principles of the common law to cover a trade mark which had been in actual use and had thus acquired a secondary meaning for an individual name or geographical location in connection with a given line of goods. The plaintiff in this action has such a registered trade mark, the words “ Oneida Community ” being thus protected, and unless the contention of the defendant is [773]*773right, that this right can be enforced only in the Federal courts, the plaintiff is entitled to be protected in its rights in the present action.

“Underlying the entire argument in behalf of the plaintiff in error,”-say the court in Robb v. Connolly (111 U. S. 624, 635) “is the idea that the judicial tribunals of the States are excluded altogether from the consideration and determination of questions involving an authority, or a right, privilege or immunity, derived from the Constitution and laws of the United States. But this view is not sustained by the statutes defining and regulating the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States. In establishing those courts, Congress has taken care not to exclude the jurisdiction of the State courts from every case to which, by the Constitution, the judicial power of the United States extends. In the Judiciary Act of 1789

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Bluebook (online)
168 A.D. 769, 154 N.Y.S. 391, 1915 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 8989, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/oneida-community-ltd-v-oneida-game-trap-co-nyappdiv-1915.