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Page Number: 39

12 

VIDAL v. ELSTER 

BARRETT, J., concurring in part 

Holmes Shoe Co. v. Delsarte Mfg. Co., 46 A. 1089 (N. J. Ch. 
Ct. 1900) (“The name of a famous person, used merely as a 
fancy  name,  may  become  an  exclusive  trade-mark”);  W. 
Browne,  Law  of  Trade-Marks  §216,  pp. 225–226  (2d  ed. 
1885) (same).5 

The legislative history of the Lanham Act also undercuts 
the Court’s conclusion.  If the names clause codified an ex-
isting common-law tradition, one might expect to see some 
reference  to  that  tradition  when  the  names  clause  was 
adopted.  But  proponents  of  the  clause  offered  a  different 
justification.  Discussing  a  predecessor  version  of  the 
clause, Edward Rogers, the Lanham Act’s primary drafter, 
remarked  that  “[t]he  idea  of  prostituting  great  names  by 
sticking  them  on  all  kinds  of  goods  is  very  distasteful  to 
me.”  Trade-Marks: Hearings on H. R. 9041 before the Sub-
committee on Trade-Marks, House Committee on Patents, 
75th Cong., 3d Sess., 79 (1938) (H. R. 9041); see J. Litman, 
Keynote  Address,  39  Cardozo  Arts  &  Ent.  L. J.  855,  856 
(2021).  The Commissioner of the Patent Office agreed, not-
ing the “shock to [his] sense of propriety to see liberty taken 
. . . with the names of celebrities of private life.”  H. R. 9041, 
at 79.  He then referred to the attempted registration of “the 
name of the Duchess of Windsor for brassieres and ladies’ 
underwear.”  Ibid.  They did not suggest that the common 

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5 The Court dismisses my examples as irrelevant because several in-
volve the names of dead individuals.  Ante, at 19, n. 4.  But “[t]he exclu-
sive right to grace paper collars with Bismarck’s name was granted while 
he  was  still  alive.”    J.  Pike,  Personal  Names  as  Trade  Symbols,  3  Mo. 
L. Rev. 93, 101 (1938) (Pike).  And the other authorities either expressly 
recognized  that  the  names  of  famous  living  persons  could  be  trade-
marked, see Barrows, 6 R. I., at 438, or did not indicate whether the rule 
differed for dead versus living individuals, see Stephano Bros., 238 F., at 
92–93.    Indeed,  “[t]he  authorities  [were]  somewhat  meagre”  as  to  “the 
rule . . . . where the notable person [was] still alive,” Pike 100, undercut-
ting the notion that the common law contained a clear rule one way or 
the other.