Paducah Distilleries Co. v. Crescent Mfg. Co.

6 Teiss. 151, 1909 La. App. LEXIS 54
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedFebruary 8, 1909
DocketNo. 4606
StatusPublished

This text of 6 Teiss. 151 (Paducah Distilleries Co. v. Crescent Mfg. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Paducah Distilleries Co. v. Crescent Mfg. Co., 6 Teiss. 151, 1909 La. App. LEXIS 54 (La. Ct. App. 1909).

Opinion

MOORE, J.

Plaintiff prosecutes tbis appeal from a judgment maintaining a plea of no cause of action interposed by defendants to the original and supplemental petitions of plaintiff.

The allegations of the original petition are that the plaintiff corporation “is and has been engaged in the business of selling wholesale, whiskies, wines, gin, cordials and other alco[153]*153holic drinks, and it has considerable business in the Parish of Orleans; that a profitable part of the business consists in the sale of liquor which it sells under the name of “Ginola,” being a preparation of gin of great excellence to the taste and of peculiar properties; that the said brand or trade-mark was invented and adopted by your petitioners who were the first to use it, same never having been previously used; that owing to its purity, palatability and its peculiar properties, petitioners secured for Ginola a very ready sale, and it was and is in great demand and is well known to the trade of the city and elsewhere, and petitioners, by reason of its popularity and the extended sale of said' Ginola were enjoying a considerable source of profit and revenue therefrom and wherever petitioner’s genuine Ginola has been used it has acquired and enjoyed a high reputation, and particularly in New Orleans, and petitioners have used great efforts to extend the sales thereof and make it a success and have spent considerable sums of money in advertising the. said brand in order to create a demand and market therefor.; that said name or brand Ginola has been used by it (petitioner) for several years and they have had the said brand copyrighted in the Patent Office of the United States under the laws of the United States, also have further protected their rights and notified the public by registering the same with Mida’s Trade Mark Bureau of Chicago, Ill., which is an institution utilized by dealers in whiskies and wines and liquors for the purpose of making known their respective brands and trade-marks and is resorted to by the trade for information upon that subject; that the defendants for some time past have been infringing upon your petitioners ’ rights and have offered fo:r sale and have sold in this city of New Orleans and elsewhere a liquid, presumably a concoction or compound of gin, under the name of Ginola with the unlawful and fraudulent purpose of substituting the same for petitioners’ goods and representing the said goods to be the goods of petitioners, in violation of petitioners’ aforesaid rights; that defendants well knew that petitioners were the owners and proprietors of the brand Ginola and had the exclusive right to use the same; that their (defendants’) said conduct is not only a fraud upon petitioners but also to the trade at large; that the counterfeit liquid which is sold by the defendants under the name of Ginola is of very inferior quality [154]*154and has a bad taste and flavor and is calculated to and does seriously injure the reputation and salability of petitioners’ goods, as persons buying and using the imitation goods sold by the defendants are apt to be prejudiced against the genuine article; that all of the said infringements and use of the trademark Ginola was done clandestinely and without the knowledge and consent of petitioners, and that the said sale and conduct of the defendants constitute unfair and fraudulent competition in business and has seriously injured petitioners’ business, and if allowed to continue will work an irreparable injury to petitioners’ business; that the said sales and conduct of the defendants have greatly damaged petitioners by depriving them of profits to which they were entitled and which they would have made by the sales of their genuine Ginola and also by destroying the reputation of their own brand by reason of the bad quality of the counterfeit article; that petitioners are entitled to an accounting by the said defendants of all sales made by them ancl to an injunction restraining and enjoining them from making any further use of the said trade-mark or trade-name.”

The prayer is for judgment recognizing in petitioners ‘ ‘ the' sole and exclusive ownership and right to use the said trade-name Ginola as a name or brand for gin or any compound of gin or for any purpose whatsoever and enjoining them, or each of them, from selling any gin, compound of gin or article, thing or substitute whatsoever under the name of Ginola; and finally for judgment against defendants for the sum of two thousand dollars, etc.

Prior to the filing of their exception of no cause of action defendants excepted to the original petition on the ground of vagueness, averring in their said exception: “That said petition states that petitioners sell a liquid under the name Ginola, being a preparation of gin of great excellence, pleasant to the taste and of peculiar properties. ‘That said statement is inconsistent and at variance with the trade-mark registered by plaintiff in the United States Patent Office on January 29th, 1907, which registry of trade-mark states that same is a trademark for gin.’ That exceptors are entitled to know whether the word Ginola as applied to the article prepared by plaintiffs is for gin or a preparation of gin, and if a preparation of gin, what the preparation consists of.”

This objection being sustained but with leave to amend, a [155]*155supplemental petition was filed wherein it is alleged as supplemental to the allegations of the original petition:

‘' That Ginola is a gin, and that the word Ginola is a purely fictitious term invented by petitioners; was never in use by any one before and designates a kind of gin. That the trade-mark or copyright Ginola is for gin and the goods sold by petitioners thereunder are gin.”

The specific grounds assigned why the pltintifl: corporation discloses no cause of action in the petition as amended, are, to quote from appellee’s brief, 1st, “that plaintiff has, and can have no exclusive use of the word ‘Ginola’ as applied to the gin placed on the market by it, forasmuch as this word (Ginola) is not as thus applied, an arbitrary or fanciful word, but is one which only describes the kind, quality, composition and properties of the article to which it is applied,” to-wit: gin. 2nd, ‘ ‘ That no allegation is made in the petition that the defendants have imitated the labels or lithographic picture on the label, which is a picture of an elderly man holding in' his hand a crucible or retort; nor is any allegation made that defendants have imitated the packages or bottles of the plaintiff’s or style of package in which the plaintiffs put up their goods.” 3rd, “That it is not alleged that defendants are using, imitating or counterfeiting the entire trade-mark, but only charge that they, the defendants, are putting on the market and selling a gin under the name of Ginola”; and 4th, that as the plaintiff corporation is not “seeking to protect the recipe or composition of the article called ‘Ginola’ and prepared by plaintiff” and which “confessedly is nothing but gin which plaintiff does not pretend to be the inventor of, “any person “has the right and privilege of distilling gin and placing it on the market with the designation: Ginola.”

The general principles applicable to trade-marks and the conditions under which a party may establish an exclusive right to the use of a name or symbol, are well settled by the following decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, to-wit: Canal Co. vs. Clark, 13 Wall 311; McLean vs.

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Bluebook (online)
6 Teiss. 151, 1909 La. App. LEXIS 54, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/paducah-distilleries-co-v-crescent-mfg-co-lactapp-1909.