Opinion ID: 1475663
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Where the Trade Name Embodies the Corporate Title

Text: The property right in a trade name will be recognized perhaps even more readily when, as here, it embodies the distinctive part of the owner's corporate name. In American Steel Foundries v. Robertson, 269 U.S. 372, 46 S.Ct. 160, 162, 70 L.Ed. 317, the court said: The general doctrine is that equity not only will enjoin the appropriation and use of a trade-mark or trade-name, where it is completely identical with the name of the corporation, but will enjoin such appropriation and use where the resemblance is so close as to be likely to produce confusion as to such identity, to the injury of the corporation to which the name belongs. [Cases cited.] In an oft-cited case not referred to in the briefs, Standard Oil Co. of New Mexico v. Standard Oil Co. of California, 10 Cir., 56 F.2d 973, 977, 978, the court used the following language: A corporate name is in the nature of a property right. [Many cases cited] By the prior lawful entry into a field under a legally adopted name, and by prior appropriation and use thereof, a corporation acquires a right to such name which the law will recognize and protect. [Many cases cited]