The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-20 00:00:00

TRADE MARKS.

Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Gibson have started on a
rival crusade of no little difficulty. False marks
are- as old as the world, and so also is the task of
distinguishing them from the true, of stigmatising
and rejecting them. It is the universality of false
pretence in every possible form that baffles the en-
deavours of poor, naked, unarmed Truth. The law
can deal with extreme cases, and can make an °cc a.
sional example, and can give a sort of practical
sanction to right moral feeling on the subject, but
for one imposture it detects and punishes it must
leave a thousand triumphant and prosperous. Mr.
Roebuck's cases are, of course, tangible and perhaps
accessible. The forgery of a mark on a pair of
scissors, on a wrapper or a reel of thread, ought,
one would think, to be ascertainable and—Punish-
able as the forgery of a bank-note or a signature.
But, supposing the legal remedy to be provided by
a penal statute and a system of registration, or any
other appliance, it is immediately found that the
principle carries us very far. Legislation finds
itself out of its depth very soon. Anybody may
assume a name, or may chance to have one ready
made to the purpose. There may be two firms in
one city, in one street, with the same name ;"the
one of the most scrupulous honour, the other ready
to pass off an inferior article when it can, and re-
spectable only by a confusion of names. The name
of a town may be a mark, as that of Sheffield used
to be in comparison with that of a great Midland
rival. It is fraudulent, but could never be punish-
able, to represent goods made at one place as the
products of another. If the way of getting up a
thing appears to bo associated with its success, that
is imitated ; yet the shape of a packet, its colour,
its size, and its decorations could never be reached
by law. Imitation pervades all arts and manufac-
tures. We have metals to imitate silver and gold;
mixed fabrics to imitate worsted and silk ; small
quantities made to do the duty of great; fugitive
colours pretending to last ; and copies of patterns as
good as the original. You may imitate anything,
from a sheet of " Bath paper" to a volume of ser-
mons, from a bird's egg to a monster nugget of
gold. What is a felt carpet so printed as to look
like an elaborately-woven design but au imposture?
Then a name may only mean a process of manufac-
ture. One used to see in the shops what was called
"Durham mustard." It was only mustard in which
the flour had been separated from the husk, the
process being first practised at Durham. Is a Uhel-
sea bun, or a Banbury cake, or a Pontefract cake an
imposture because it is not made at these places ?
How are we to ascertain the original house, or firm,
or family that discovered these modes of combining
pastry with sweets? A law of Trade Marks rigidly
enforced would produce internecine war between
twenty-seven houses at Cologne. Champagne is now
made everywhere, from all materials, and in ail sorts
of ways. The late Sir Robt. Peel's grandfather used
to be called "Parsley Peel," from a white parsley
sprig on a blue ground which was once the favourite
print, and which, though now obtainable, we should
think, at sd. a yard, was once sought eagerly at
half-a-crown. a No doubt, it has been borrowed and
imitated enoagh. What are we to say to painters
who fall into a style, and borrow marks uncon-
sciously ? All these are the difficulties of the legis-
lative task. In many cases the injury is slight, or
it is only that universal injustice which truth suffers
at the hands of error or hypocrisy, There are great
and crying frauds which amount to robberies on a
large scale.
,These the law ought to reach, for
' wherever there is a palpable wrong there ought to
be a remedy.
Two measures are now before the world, and a
select committee will soon winnow these and a good
many more. As we aro told that something must
be done, that great houses are suffering loss, that
the public are imposed on, and the credit of the
country injured abroad, Parliament ought to legis-
late if only to satisfy people of the importance of
legislation. It is the duty of a Government to
stigmatise injurious practices, even if it can do no
more. The great majority of people do not know
right from wrong till they smart for the wrong, or
see others smart for it. It is vain to expect that
education will ever reach errors the very existence
of which is outside show and a confusion of right
with wrong. The whole frame of things is knit
with fraud in one form or another. It is the task
of the lawgiver to stamp the truth in action, as he
does the true metal, or the right weight and measure,
He must try it, even if ho fail. As the imposture
always pretends to be truth and borrows its marks,
so the first effect of a law is to furnish fresh means
of deception. The falsest thing that ever existed
can appeal to the law for protection against another
falsehood. An importure:can easily claim a province
to which it has no more right than any other
manufacture of equal or greater merit. But when
we are told, and no doubt told with much reason,
that registration is necessary to the working of a
law, that at once brings us to the very verge of
that abyss,
the Law of Patents, and reminds us, too,
of various schemes of registration for that and other
purposes. A thousand bubble schemes have been
palmed on the simple for solid realities, on the
strength of their being registered according to the
terms of an Act of Parliament ; though if the scheme
had been only a proposition to bottle up summer
heat for winter supply it could not have been re-
fused registration. The shops are full of trifles
registered, though with no originality and very
little merit. But, there are worse results, akin to
these, which clog invention under the Patent Laws.
What if an infinity of trade marks were to be regis-
tered, mainly to occupy the ground, even though
the mark could hardly be said to represent an article
in actual vogue and known to trade ? In this way
a manufacturer might find himself trespassing on
the rights of some emblem which existed only in
the records of an office or on the upper shelves of a
back shop. There is both intentional imitation and
inevitable following; and, if many an original

writer has felt a passing wish that nobody had ever
written before him, there is not a branch of art or
manufacture in which the inventor is not closely
elbowed by a crowd of too successful predecessors.
After all, the public must protect themselves, and
this is one of the many points in which a man does
a great service to society by doing his duty to him-
self. It is everybody's duty to deal with honest
men, and to make every possible distinction between
honest men and rogues. There is a certain class of
shops that nobody would enter except in a spirit of
enterprise, and under some undefined hope of cheat-
ing those whom he knows to be resolved on cheating
him. This is much the same thing as frequenting a
gambling table, and is an occasion on which the sim-
ple, the inexperienced, and the sanguine are almost
sure to be taken in. They who change their trades-
men often and needlessly, who allow themselves to be
allured by special promises, and who have a taste for
bargains, are in the way to encourage some form of
dishonesty. No legisl9lion will ever compel that
honesty which must still be a free choice, or super-
sede that discrimination which must still be a duty
and a trial. Parliament will never be able to do for
people what they have to do for themselves. It may
try, and, indeed, it ought to do what can be done ;
but if it succeeds—if the bill to be passed this Ses-
sion has any effect at all—it will be found to re-
quire early revision, and to have only broken the
ground in its campaign with imposture. The work
is a wide one. The English aro not an original
people. We apply, we improve, we multiply, we
facilitate, but we are not inventive in the sense'of
the French or some other countries. We shall soon
find that we do but sanction against ourselves any
severe law we may choose to direct against conti-
nental fabricators. It will, too, take a wide range
of vision to forsee how far a rigorous law will take
us in our own country.—Times.