Opinion ID: 1475663
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: A Fanciful Trade Name is Especially Protected

Text: The Stork Club is a trade name that, in the language of the books, might well be described as odd, fanciful, strange, and truly arbitrary. It is in no way descriptive of the appellant's night club, for in its primary significance it would denote a club for storks. Nor is it likely that the sophisticates who are its most publicized customers are particularly interested in the stork. It is not a trade name that would naturally suggest itself for a fashionable restaurant. Elbow Room, the name adopted by one of the predecessors of the appellees, would have been more appropriate. so would Stagger Inn, or even Filling Station. In other words, there is little likelihood that the appellant's predecessors and the appellees' predecessor hit upon the names The Stork Club and Stork Club, respectively, as acts of independent creation. It seems a clear case of a junior appropriator's seeking to capitalize on the prestige of the senior, of which more hereafter. Equity gives a greater degree of protection to fanciful trade names than it accords to names in common use. In Arrow Distilleries v. Globe Brewing Co., 4 Cir., 117 F.2d 347, 351, the court said:    the rule that coined or fanciful marks or names should be given a much broader degree of protection than words in common use is sound, for it recognizes not only the orthodox basis of the law of trade-marks that the sale of the goods of one manufacturer or vendor as those of another should be prevented, but also the fact that in modern business the trade-mark performs the added function of an advertising device, whose value may be injured or destroyed unless protected by the courts. [6] When, as here, an insigne accompanies the coined trade name, there is even greater need for safeguarding the public as well as the senior appropriator from imitations. Rhea v. Bacon, supra, 5 Cir., 87 F.2d at page 977.