Opinion ID: 1481462
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Alien Property Custodian.

Text: The issue of the Custodian's ownership of the trade-mark is one of law. It arises from the construction to be given the Trading with the Enemy Act and is based on two official acts authorized by the statute: One, the license of the trade-mark; and the other, its seizure. Sections 5(a) and 10(c), 40 Stat. 411; section 12 as amended by the Act of March 28, 1918, 40 Stat. 459, and subsection (c) of section 7 as amended by the Act of November 4, 1918, 40 Stat. 1020. The amendment to subsection (c) of section 7 of the Act approved November 4, 1918, authorized the Custodian to seize enemy-owned patents, copyrights    trademarks, choses in action, and rights and claims of every character and description owing or belonging to    an enemy.    On August 4, 1920, the Custodian, determining that the Hungarian Company was an enemy, seized the trade-mark Tauril, together with the business of said enemy appurtenant thereto, and every right, title and interest with respect thereto, and demanded, under the terms of the Act, that the trademark, together with the rights enumerated, subject to the rights of the Anchor Packing Company, as licensee of the Federal Trade Commission, be transferred, assigned and delivered to him, to be held and administered as provided by law. This demand  a symbolic act of capture  was addressed to the Commissioner of Patents and the Anchor Packing Company, the defendant. The quoted provision of the statute is broad enough to warrant the demand thus made and the demand was broad enough to embrace the license and accrued royalties. When the Custodian, by seizure, acquired the trade-mark and its legal appurtenances, did he gain an ownership in them that entitled him to the statutory rights and remedies of an owner? In the Chemical Foundation Case we said: Upon the seizure of enemy property under authority of the Act the title of the enemy owners passed out of them. Passing out of them, it went somewhere. We did not have occasion to determine where it went, whether to the Custodian or the United States. And so the Supreme Court in the same case expressly held that on seizure the enemy owner lost all rights in his property, and, in sustaining sales of enemy-owned patents and trade-marks which the Custodian had seized, it would seem that, by necessary implication, the Supreme Court decided that the Alien Property Custodian had at least the legal title to them. As the Custodian was held in that case to be the owner of such property for purposes of sale, we think he is the owner of the profits arising from the licensed use of the trade-mark for purposes of their recovery by suit. Section 10 (f) provides an owner with such a remedy. At the institution of this suit, section 10 (f) remained as enacted. It is clear that, when enacted, the Congress did not have the Alien Property Custodian in mind, for the reason that under the original terms of the Act he could not seize and therefore could not own a trade-mark. But later the Congress by amendments changed the whole character of the Act and gave the Custodian power to seize and sell trade-marks. United States v. Chemical Foundation, supra. Legislation when enacted is not always restricted to the then present conditions; it is generally phrased to cover unknown conditions as later they may arise within the general scope of the legislative intent. A new owner appeared in the statute when the Congress created him by the amendments of March 28, 1918, and November 4, 1918, authorizing the Custodian to seize and sell enemy-owned trade-marks with their incidents, which without doubt include profits from a licensed use. It would, we think, be wrong to hold that the Congress, when it created the Custodian an owner of seized enemy property for certain purposes, at the same time withheld from him the remedies which the statute affords an owner of such property. But for section 10 (f) of the Act there is not available to the Custodian any remedy by which he can assert his rights of ownership in respect to a licensed use of a trade-mark or by which he can recover for their invasion. When the Congress created this quality of ownership in him it became necessary to infer that it intended to give him all the attributes of ownership defined by the Act and, finding provision already made for recovery of a licensed use by the owner of a trade-mark, it may be assumed that the Congress regarded that provision sufficient to cover the case of the Custodian. A liberal construction of this section has been deemed necessary to effect the purposes of the Congress and to give a remedy where later the Congress by amendment conferred a new right in respect to an old subject. Miller v. Robertson, 266 U. S. 243, 45 S. Ct. 73, 69 L. Ed. 265; Reising v. Deutsche, etc. (C. C. A.) 15 F.(2d) 259. With this in mind, it is evident the Congress did not limit section 10 (f) to the only owner contemplated by the statute at the time of its enactment. When clothed by amendment with the characteristics of an owner of the trade-mark, we think the Custodian came within that general term as it appeared in that section, not when enacted but at the time of the commencement of suit, Reising v. Deutsche, etc., supra, and as the profits from the licensed use of the trade-mark belong to the Custodian alone, he has the right of owner to sue for them. The decree of the District Court is reversed with direction that the bill be reinstated and the case be tried and decided in conformity with this opinion.