Walter Baker & Co. v. Baker

77 F. 181, 1896 U.S. App. LEXIS 2946
U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Western Virginia·Decided September 3, 1896·Published·Cited by 16 cases

Opinion

PAUL, District Judge

(after stating the facts). The first question presented by the foregoing statement of facts for the determination of the court is as to the power of a court of equity to enjoin a man from using his own name in connection with any business in which he wishes to engage. Very elaborate arguments have been made by counsel on this question, and numerous decisions of the state and federal courts cited. The result of these decisions is that a man has a right to use his own name in connection with any business he honestly desires to carry on. The doctrine is equally well settled that equity will direct how a man shall use his name in Ms purpose to denote his own individuality. He will not be allowed to so use his own name as to work an injury to another having the same name, nor to perpetrate a fraud upon the public. In Meyers v. Medicine Co., 7 C. C. A. 558, 58 Fed. 884, the court says:

“While the light of no one can he denied to use his name in connection with his business, or in connection with articles of his own production, so as to show the business or product to be his, yet lie should not be allowed to designate his article by his own name in such a way as to cause it to he mistaken for the manufacture or goods of another already in the market under the same or a similar name. Whether it be his name, or some other possession, every one, by the familiar maxim, must so use his own as not to injure the possession or right of another. The question is therefore resolved info one of fact, upon the evidence spread upon the record, — whether the means here employed expose the unwary to mistake one man’s goods for the goods of another?”

In Landreth v. Landreth, 22 Fed. 41, the doctrine is thus stated:

“Of course, a party cannot he debarred from the right to use his own name in advertising' his goods and putting them on the market, but where other persons bearing the same surname have previously used the name in connection with their goods in such manner and for such a length of time as to make it a guaranty that the goods hearing the name emanated from them, they will he protected against the use of that name, even by a person bearing the same name, in such form as to constitute a false representation of the origin of the goods.”

[184] In that case Judge Dyer said:

. “Now, as I have said, the defendant’s label is, as it seems to me, a palpable imitation of the complainant’s. In the color of the ink used, in the arrangement of the words, and in the general style of the labels, he has, so to speak, dressed his goods in the garb previously adopted by the complainants. Whether intended or not, this necessarily operates a fraud upon them, and upon the public.”

In a recent case (Pillsbury v. Flour Mills) decided by the circuit court’of appeals, Seventh circuit (12 C. C. A. 432, 64 Fed. 841), the court said:

“The general principles by which courts are guided in such cases are well and correctly stated in Cement Co. v. Le Page, 147 Mass. 206, 17 N. E. 304, as follows: ‘A person cannot make a trade-mark of his own name, and thus debar another having the same name from using it in his business, if he does so honestly, and without miy intention to appropriate wrongfully the good will of a business already established by others of the name. Every one has the absolute right to use his own name honestly in his own business for the purpose of advertising it, even though he may thereby incidentally interfere with and injure the business of another having the name. In such ease the inconvenience or loss to which those having a common right to it are subjected is damnum absque injuria. But, although he may thus use his name, he cannot resort to any artifice or do any act calculated to mislead the public as to the identity of the business firm or establishment, or of the articles produced by them, and thus produce injury to the other beyond that which results frogi the similarityof names.’ ”

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Walter Baker & Co. v. Baker, 77 F. 181, 1896 U.S. App. LEXIS 2946 (circtwdva 1896).

77 F. 181 (Walter Baker & Co. v. Baker) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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