Car-Freshner Corporation, Cross-Appellee v. S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• explaining that a defendant’s display of its own trademark on a tree-shaped car freshener suggested that the product’s shape was used otherwise than as a mark
• explaining that a defendant’s display of its own mark on a tree-shaped car freshener suggested that the product’s allegedly infringing shape was used other than as a mark
• noting importance of “protect[ing] the right of society at large to use words or images in their primary descriptive sense”
• finding defendant’s use did not constitute “use as a mark” when product was sold “in boxes prominently bearing [defendant’s] trademark [and] corporate logo”
• noting importance of “protect[ing] the right of society at large to use words or images in their primary descriptive sense”
• “[F]air use permits others to use a protected mark to describe aspects of their own goods, provided the use is in good faith and not as a mark.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).