Court Opinion

ID: 9448999
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:52:04.492857+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:38.571793
License: Public Domain

RICH, Judge
(concurring).
I agree with the result and with the court’s opinion except for its concluding *822paragraph, which fails to express my feelings.
I cannot see in the marks CELAB and CENTRALAB either the “same suggestive connotation” or the possibility of creating the “same mental impression.” CELAB is meaningless except as an indication of origin. CENTRALAB seems an obvious contraction of the common words “central” and “laboratory” and thus has a connotation.1 There is neither similarity in sound nor appearance, however, so I am unable to see how either the connotation or the mental impression created can possibly be the same, except in the ultimate sense of indicating common origin.
What seems to have caused actual confusion, as shown by the letters in evidence, and is, in my opinion, likely to cause much more, is the fact that CELAB and CENTRALAB, in the words of section 2(d), so resemble each other as to be likely to confuse. Since CELAB consists of the first two and the last three letters of CENTRALAB, the former mark gives people the impression that CENTRALAB has contracted its name to make another trademark for one of its products. This is a common practice in business. Hence to businessmen it seems probable that a product marked CELAB would come from the CENTRALAB people, regardless of their corporate name.
I believe that it is the mind of the beholder that bridges the obvious differences between these marks and reasons out from them a probable common source for the goods bearing the two marks, so as to result in confusion. The resemblance between the two marks is of such a nature as to make this not only possible but probable. The letters in evidence show that this has happened several times and they are entitled to much more weight than the board gave them, for, I would assume, they are just the visible-portion of the iceberg.
Confusion being likely, it follows that the prohibited degree of resemblance is. present.

. Reg. No. 204,006 in fact shows that the mark was originally adopted and used by Central Radio Laboratories, so the probable derivation which one would infer from the mark appears to correspond with actual fact. Reg. No. 502,313 is of a mark which includes the initials “CRL” in a small diamond, associated with the ' word mark, and states that that feature was first used in 1922.