State Trade-Mark Laws
Most states have some kind of a trade-mark law, many of them good ones, and about a dozen have strong penal codes covering the subject, under the term of counterfeiting, while others are able to do what the United States courts cannot do—actually mete out imprisonment to those who infringe. Pennsylvania's law in this respect is particularly thorough.
The Federal statutes concerning trade-marks apply to the entire country. Few large concerns doing a national business register in the states. Most of them go to the Patent Office and secure national registration.
There is nothing in any of the state laws which make it safer to register by states, since California's obnoxious law has been repealed, but in some cases, where persistent infringers are at work, owners of trade-marks secure state registration as an extra precaution.
CHAPTER II
Essentials of a Valid Trade-Mark
To a layman the trade-mark law seems, at first consideration, to be a crystallized system of arbitrary rules without a fundamental underlying principle.
A study of its application will show that this is a mistaken view of the case. As a matter of fact, the law is excellently framed, and is based on a broad principle which draws a just line of cleavage between the rights of an individual and his encroachment upon the rights of others.
An illustrious and valuable trade-mark.
In the practical workings of a law which deals with commercial activities in their most highly developed phase, in a sphere where the ingenuity of men is on fertile ground, in cases where the weight of a hair would make the difference between yea and nay, it is inevitable that many fine distinctions must be drawn.
The courts, by contradictory decisions, have here and there brought confusion into the practice of the Patent Office, as applied to trade-mark procedure, but, on the whole, the judicial interpretation of the law has been fairly uniform and consistent.
It should be mentioned here, for the reader's information, that the attitude of the Patent Office toward applications for the registration of trade-marks has been criticized, on various occasions, by some of those who have had dealings with it. Its rulings have been characterized as narrow and illiberal, especially in the matter of trade-marks alleged to be descriptive in their nature.
In the preceding chapter we laid down briefly the requisites of a valid trade-mark. We shall now discuss these requirements more fully, using specific and generally well-known examples of trade-marks to illustrate our meaning.