Broderick & Bascom Rope Co. v. Manoff
| Decision Date | 12 June 1930 |
| Docket Number | No. 5197.,5197. |
| Parties | BRODERICK & BASCOM ROPE CO. v. MANOFF. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Marston Allen, of Cincinnati, Ohio (Allen & Allen, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Calkins, Storey & Nye, of Toledo, Ohio, Hugh K. Wagner, of St. Louis, Mo., on the brief), for appellant.
Smith, Baker, Effler & Eastman, of Toledo, Ohio, for appellee.
Before DENISON, HICKS, and HICKENLOOPER, Circuit Judges.
The appellant rope company makes a special rope adapted for towing disabled motorcars. It might have called its product a tow rope for automobiles, or an automobile tow line. Developing this latter name through the stage Auto-Tow-Line it devised a fairly arbitrary though suggestive name — Autowline. This was registered as a trade-mark; and, in so far as the word had a descriptive character, the rope company eventually also claimed rights upon a secondary meaning that the article so marked was its product. The Metal Fibre Rope Company infringed this trade-mark, using (with hyphens) the identical word Au-Tow-Line as the name of its product. An infringement suit in the court below resulted in a decree for plaintiff by default. Plaintiff's exclusive right to the mark Autowline, both as a legal trade-mark and through a secondary meaning ownership, was adjudicated by this decree; and it enjoined the defendant and its officers, agents, etc., from marking its articles with the trade-mark, either in the form Autowline, or in the form Au-Tow-Line. Manoff, the appellee, was the chief owner and general manager of the Fibre Company, and a copy of the injunction was served upon him. Almost immediately thereafter, using the assumed name, "Wilman Company," he began distributing a similar product prominently marked with the name Auto-Tow-Line, and used the same name upon his circulars. Thereupon the present contempt proceeding was brought against him. The court below dismissed it.
The question chiefly argued by counsel and the one upon which the dismissal below was based, is whether the word, or the compound word, Auto-Tow-Line is so far merely descriptive of the article that Manoff, or any other manufacturer, has the right to use it in spite of the plaintiff's trade-mark. In support of plaintiff's claim of exclusion, it is said that when words primarily descriptive have, through a secondary meaning, come to indicate an article produced by plaintiff, a competitor may not use them as the name of his product as he would...
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