Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/321

295 UNFAIR COMPETITION. 295 fact of setting up business and using the geographical trade name, which was not the case in Wotherspoon v. Currie, an injunction was granted, Hmited to the use of the trade name as a trade mark. Orr, Evving & Co. v. Johnson^ is also a very extreme case, the defendant being enjoined from using a label every feature of which was common to the trade, as was the case of the label used by the plaintiff, because ultimate purchasers in India had given the plain- tiff's goods a trade name derived from a representation of two ele- phants which formed part of plaintiff's ticket, and the court thought it likely that defendant's goods, the ticket of which also had two elephants as a feature, might perhaps derive some benefit from this fact. In Lorillard v. Pride,^ upon similar facts, a different conclu- sion was reached in this country. In business names. Lea v. Haley ^ and Gray v. Taper Sleeve Pulley Works* represent the extreme in England and the United States, in both cases a purely descriptive phrase being given pro- tection as a business name. In "dressing up" cases we have left our English cousins far behind. The extension of plaintiffs' rights at the expense of the public, and the abandonment of property in the plaintiff as a ground of action, is illustrated in Hildreth v. McDonald, Von Mumm v. Frash, and Cook v, Ross. In Hildreth v, McDonald^ and Von Mumm V. Frash ^ protection was afforded to color alone as a dis- tinctive mark, and in Cook v. Ross'' to shape alone. The old rule as shown in Moorman v. Hoge ^ and Mumm v. Kirk,^ that color and shape alone could not be exclusively claimed seems to be passing away, and nothing is certain in " dressing up " cases but that a man cannot claim the exclusive right to do up his goods in brown paper,^^ nor the exclusive right to put them up in a package well known and used for other purposes, a tin pail, to wit.^^ Trade Secrets. The communication or use of a trade secret by one who Is bound in good conscience not to use or communicate it will be restrained,^^ 1 Stated on page 279. * 16 Fed. Rep. 436. "^ 12> Fed. Rep 203. 2 28 Fed. Rep. 434. ^ 164 Mass. 16. « Fed. Cas. 9783. 8 L. R. 5 Ch. 155. « 56 Fed. Rep. 830. » 40 Fed. Rep. 589. 10 N. K. Fairbank Co. v. R. W. Bell Mfg. Co., 71 Fed. Rep. 295. 11 Harrington v Libby, 14 Blatch. 128; s. C. Fed. Cas. 6107. 12 Peabody v. Norfolk, 98 Mass. 452; Merryweather v. Moore, [1892] 2 Ch. 518; Youatt V. V^inyard, i Jac. & W. 394 ; Western v. Henimons, 2 Vict. L. R. Eq. 121 ; Whitney v. Hickling, 5 Grant Up. Can. Ch. 605.