Opinion ID: 1475663
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Trade Names and Trademarks Stand on a Similar Footing

Text: In California and elsewhere, a firmly established trade name receives the same protection from the law as a trade mark. In the recent case of Eastern Columbia, Inc. v. Waldman, 30 Cal.2d 268, 271, 181 P.2d 865, 867, the Supreme Court of California said: It is asserted by defendant that an absolute injunction will not be granted for the infringement of the right to use a word in what is called a `secondary meaning' as distinguished from a technical trademark. Where words have acquired, as is established beyond dispute in this case, a fanciful meaning  a meaning that has no connection with their common meaning, it may be more properly said that such meaning is their primary meaning in so far as their use in business is concerned. Their common meaning has dropped into the background. Otherwise no right to use them to the exclusion of others would have been acquired. When, however, words have acquired such a sense and are the subject of the good will and reputation of a business which they designate, there is little if anything left to distinguish them from a trademark, a symbol, characters or words which have no common meaning and which are artificial, insofar as the scope of protection afforded to the one who has the prior right. An absolute injunction is proper where defendant's conduct is unlawful. [Authority cited] The protection afforded trade names which have acquired the status here reached is treated in the same category as trademarks, where it is not necessary that the competitor use the words to describe his product. [Many cases cited] (Emphasis supplied.) See also R. H. Macy & Co., Inc. v. Macys, Inc., D.C.Okl., 39 F.2d 186, 187; Restatement of the Law, torts, vol. 3, pages 562-566. Accordingly, in the present inquiry it will be helpful to consider decisions dealing with trademarks as well as those concerned simply with trade names.