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Page Number: 18

14 

VIDAL v. ELSTER 

Opinion of the Court 

share the same name.”  J. Rothman, Navigating the Iden-
tity Thicket, 135 Harv. L. Rev. 1271, 1306 (2022); see also 
Treadway 143–144.  In other words, a person’s right to his
name  cannot  be  exclusive  as  to  other  people  bearing  the
same name: John Smith cannot acquire a trademark that 
prohibits other John Smiths from using their own names. 
See  McLean,  96  U. S.,  at  252  (“[H]e  cannot  have  such  a
right, even in his own name, as against another person of 
the  same  name,  unless  such  other  person  uses  a  form  of 
stamp or label so like that used by the complaining party as 
to represent that the goods of the former are of the latter’s 
manufacture”); accord, Brown Chemical, 139 U. S., at 542; 
MeNeely v. MeNeely, 62 N. Y. 427, 432 (Ct. App. 1875); see 
also Treadway 143; accord, post, at 10 (opinion of BARRETT, 
J.).  Consider the case of John L. Faber and John H. Faber, 
two  men  who  independently  manufactured  lead  pencils 
near Nuremberg, Germany.  Both men stamped the pencils 
they manufactured with their shared surname.  After rec-
ognizing that each man “had the right to put his own name
on his own pencils,” the New York Supreme Court declined
to allow one man to effectively trademark the other man’s 
name.  Faber v. Faber, 3 Abb. Pr. (N. S.) 115, 116 (1867). 

We see no evidence that the common law afforded protec-
tion to a person seeking a trademark of another living per-
son’s name.  To the contrary, English courts recognized that
selling a product under another person’s name could be ac-
tionable fraud.  See, e.g., Singleton, 3 Dougl. 293, 99 Eng. 
Rep. 661; Croft v. Day, 7 Beav. 84, 88, 49 Eng. Rep. 994, 996 
(1843) (“[N]o man has a right to sell his goods as the goods
of another”).  This recognition carried over to our country. 
See McLean, 96 U. S., at 252 (“[I]t is doubtless correct to say 
that a person may have a right in his own name as a trade-
mark as against a trader or dealer of a different name”); see
also Faber, 3 Abb. Pr. (N. S.), at 116.  Even in the absence 
of  fraud,  it  would  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  square
such a right to trademark another person’s name with our