A celebrated instance of a face used as a trade-mark is shown in the picture of Gerhard Mennen on this page. Mennen's Talcum Powder was produced by Gerhard Mennen, who had his own picture put on each package as an identification to the purchaser. After years of use, his portrait was formally registered in the Patent Office.
Another famous face is that of W. L. Douglas, shoe manufacturer and Ex-Governor of Massachusetts.
A very effective trade-mark is a combination of Thomas A. Edison's portrait and signature, used with the Edison Phonograph. Edison is known by reputation to every American, and his picture and signature used in connection with a mechanical device, give it the stamp of high excellence. Imagine how much more difficult the selling effort of the Edison Phonograph Company would have been if they had called their instrument The Voltex Phonograph, for example, or some similar name.
Everybody has seen the Woodbury face, which is identified with Woodbury's Facial Soap, and other preparations of the Andrew Jergens Company of Cincinnati. This is a very valuable trade-mark, on account of the extensive advertising, running through many years, that has been given it. One of the striking features of this trade-mark is that the head seems to be neatly decapitated just under the chin. This odd appearance makes the memory of this picture stick in the reader's mind longer than any ordinary portrayal of a human face.
A Valid Trade-Mark Cannot Be any Arrangement of Words or Devices Descriptive of the Goods with which They are Used, or of the Character or Quality of the Goods
The intent of the law here is to prevent the individual appropriation of general terms descriptive of a class of goods. If it were allowable to register and protect such phrases as "The Best Soap in the World", applied to a certain brand of soap, for instance, it is easy to see that all desirable superlatives and descriptive words would soon be appropriated, to the detriment of other concerns in the same line of trade. Therefore, the law makes strict provision that a trade-mark shall not be descriptive in any sense.
Though this is the intent of the law, in its working out the line seems to be finely drawn in some cases.
"Royal" has been held to be a valid trade-mark for a baking powder on the ground that it has been long used as the name of the total output of a factory, and that it has become to the public mind a designation of origin. It seems difficult for a layman to reconcile this decision with that of another court, which held that "Royal" is not a valid trade-mark for flour, as it indicates "quality and is incapable of exclusive appropriation."