Piper v. Laughman

Citations

• 128 Pa. 1
• 18 A. 415
• 1889 Pa. LEXIS 766

Syllabus

<p>1. The ownership of the trade-name of a natural or the trade-mark of a manufactured product, is a right of property which equity will protect from infringement without requiring proof that its adoption or imitation by others was intentionally fraudulent, provided that such adoption or imitation amounted to a false representation, expressed or implied.'</p> <p>2. While the right to use a trade-mark or trade-name may not be the subject of sale as a distinct and separate property, it is capable of assignment in connection with the business in which it is used, and will pass by a transfer of the business unless reserved: a similar rule applies to a sale by one partner to his copartners of his interest in a firm.</p> <p>3. The office of a trade-mark or trade-name is to indicate the personal origin or source of the article to which it is affixed or applied, and thus identify such article and distinguish it in the market from other articles of a similar nature, and no property can exist in a word, or symbol, which has no relation to the origin or ownership of the goods, but merely indicates their name or quality.</p> <p>á. A merely geographical name, designating a district of country, cannot be appropriated as a trade-name for articles manufactured or produced within that district, so as to exclude other persons in the same district from truthfully using the same designation to indicate the local origin of similar articles manufactured or produced by them.</p> <p>5. When a large tract of coal land has become known by the name of the original patentee, and, although it may not present the features of an independent region and have sharply defined natural boundaries, or constitute a separate coal basin, or even sub-basin, it yet has received distinct geographical recognition from the public, its recognized name becomes a geographical one as applied to its coal product.</p> <p>6. The name of a private estate may, in general, be used by the owner as a trade-name; but the na