Case ID: ny_231/html/0607-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Wheeler Syndicate, Inc., Respondent, v. Star Company, Appellant.
    
      Equity — unfair competition — when injunction restraining use of certain names and characters in cartoons offered for sale properly granted.
    
    
      Wheeler Syndicate, Inc., v. Star Co., 188 App. Div. 9.64, affirmed.
    (Argued May 5, 1921;
    decided July 14, 1921.)
    Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered July 7, 1919, unanimously affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a decision of the court on trial at Special Term. This action was brought by the plaintiff as selling agent of Harry C. Fisher for the purpose of protecting Fisher’s rights in the names “ Mutt and Jeff ” and “ Mutt ” and “ Jeff ” and in the figures designated by those names. The judgment enjoined the defendant from using the words “ Mutt and Jeff ” jointly or severally as a name or trade mark for or in connection with cartoons and publishing any imitations of the Mutt and Jeff cartoons of Harry C. Fisher or of the cartoon characters “ Mutt ” and “ Jeff.”
    
      Nathan Burkan and William A. De Ford for appellant.
    
      Charles E. Kelley for respondent.
   Judgment affirmed, with costs; no opinion.

Concur: His cock, Ch. J., Cardozo, Pound, McLaughlin and Andrews, JJ. Dissenting: Crane, J. Deceased: Chase, J.