Opinion ID: 493196
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Alleged Trademark

Text: 6 The Argust corner clamp has been sold by patentee or those acting with his authority under the name 'Hi-Speed Corner Loc,' the last word of the phrase sometimes being 'Lock' or 'Lok'. It is a corner lock and the patent describes it as permitting rapid assembly and disassembly of concrete forms. Sales literature describes its operation as 'speedy.' It has not been shown to have any other name. The descriptive name of an article cannot be accorded trademark rights. In re Cooper, 254 F.2d 611, 117 USPQ 396 (CCPA 1958). Neither can descriptive terms like 'high speed,' of which 'Hi-Speed' is a mere phonetic spelling, unless they have been proved to have acquired a 'secondary meaning' (new primary meaning) in the minds of the public as indicating the source of the product. Appellants' main brief says, 'While Appellants concede that the word 'corner-loc' may be generic, the phrase 'Hi-Speed' is not generic, but descriptive.' The trial judge held the whole four-word designation to be generic or descriptive with no secondary meaning, refused to recognize any trademark rights therein, and ordered cancellation of a California State registration thereof. We agree that appellants have failed to establish any trademark rights. The parties, in discussing the issue, have spoken in terms of 'trademark invalidity' or 'invalid trademark.' The question, however, is whether appellants have a trademark or do not have a trademark, which is to say common law trademark rights which can be enforced, since there is no federal registration involved here. 'Invalid trademark' is a contradiction in terms: it is a conceptual nonentity. Trademarks in this country are not grants, like registrations. A registration may be invalid, but a word or group of words either is a trademark or not a trademark. Here it is not. To the extent appellants were held not to have established secondary meaning in the words 'Hi-Speed Corner Loc,' as a whole or in any part thereof, and therefore to have no trademark rights, we agree. There was, therefore, no right to be infringed by Formwork's mere use of the same or a similar term to refer to its corner lock.