Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/341

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CASES ANALOGOUS TO TRADE-MARKS. 3^5 that the defendant had no right to use the name in such a way as to lead persons to believe that his business was that of the plaintiffs, and that therefore there was no objection to confining the injunction to the use of the name in a particular place, inasmuch as its tendency to deceive greatly depended on the place where it was used. In the words of Lord Justice Giffard,

  • 'I quite agree that they [the plaintiffs] have no property in the

name, but the principle upon which the cases on this subject pro- ceed is, not that there is property in the word, but that it is a fraud on a person who has established a trade, and carried it on under a given name, that some other person should assume the same name, or the same name with a slight alteration, in such a way as to induce persons to deal with him in the belief that they are dealing with the person who has given a reputation to the name.'* I wish to call attention to what this decision means. It means the strict application of equitable principles to these facts. The defendant is enjoined only from using the name *' Guinea Coal Co.," in Pall Mall, in the street where it is likely to cause con- fusion, the relief the court thought necessary under these cir- cumstances to prevent fraud. And this relief was made dependent, as, indeed, it is in every case of trade-mark,^ on the plaintiffs coming into court with clean hands, — a principle familiar to all proceedings in equity. In Wotherspoon v. Currie, L. R. 5 H. L. 508, the facts are these: the plaintiffs had for some years manufactured starch at Glenfield, and their starch had become known as *' Glenfield Starch." Their business increasing, they removed from Glenfield, although they continued to call their starch by the same name. The defendant estabHshed himself at Glenfield, and began to manu- facture starch under the name of "Glenfield Starch." It was argued for the defendant that there could be nothing wrong in his using the name of the place where the starch was actually made, and that there was no misrepresentation or fraud; but the court thought otherwise, and an injunction issued to restrain the defendant from using the word Glenfield" in or upon any labels affixed to packets of starch manufactured by him, and from in any other way representing the starch manufactured by him to be "Glenfield" starch, and from selling or causing the same to be ^ Hobbs V. Franfais, 19 How. Pn 567; Fetridge v. Wells, 13 How. Pr. 385; Part- ridge V. Menck, i How. App. Cas. 558.