Court Opinion

ID: 9640037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:55:58.013105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:25.528543
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In their petition for hehearing, defendants refer as to- Ex Parte Miss Foundation Co., 76 U.S.P.Q. 616, decided by the Patent Office on March 16, 1948, after we had heard oral argument on this appeal, and therefore not before us when this case was. decided. The Pate'nt Office there denies defendants the right to register “Miss Seventeen,” under the Trade Mark Act of 1905, as a trademark for their wares, on the-ground that “Seventeen” is merely descriptive of “the age group of seventeen.” Yet,, almost simultaneously, this court sustains a judgment enjoining defendants from using; *983“Seventeen,” on the ground that it is not descriptive, and does so in the face of uncontradicted evidence in this record which is wholly in line with the conclusion of the Patent Office.
Pointing up what I said as to the confusion concerning the doctrine of confusion in this circuit which will result from the decision in the case at bar, defendants, in their rehearing petition, direct attention to the following: In Lucien Lelong v. Landers Co, Inc, 2 Cir, 164 F.2d 395, 397, this court said, but a few months ago, that it was significant “that the plaintiff did not produce any buyer who had been misled.” In Best & Company, Inc. v. Miller, 2 Cir, 167 F.2d 374, decided twelve days before the decision in the instant case, this court underscored the fact that “the record was bare of a single instance of a purchaser buying the defendant’s merchandise in the belief that it was the plaintiff’s.” Having in mind that here, too, the record is bare of a single instance of a misled buyer, I agree with this statement made by defendants in their petition: “If Best & Company, after using Liliputian Bazaar for more than six decades could not enjoin a competitor using substantially the same name in the same business, it is difficult to understand how plaintiff here, after using Seventeen for less than six months can enjoin a Mow-competitor using substantially the same name in a wholly unrelated business.”