Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting World, Inc.
| Decision Date | 26 February 1976 |
| Docket Number | D,No. 21,21 |
| Parties | , 189 U.S.P.Q. 769 ABERCROMBIE & FITCH COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HUNTING WORLD, INCORPORATED, Defendant-Appellee. ocket 74-2540. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Richard H. Wels, New York City (Moss, Wels & Marcus, New York City, of counsel), for defendant-appellee.
Roy C. Hopgood, New York City (Paul H. Blaustein, and Hopgood, Calimafde, Kalil, Blaustein & Lieberman, New York City, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellant.
Before FRIENDLY, TIMBERS and GURFEIN, Circuit Judges.
This action in the District Court for the Southern District of New York by Abercrombie & Fitch Company (A&F), owner of well-known stores at Madison Avenue and 45th Street in New York City and seven places in other states. 1 against Hunting World, Incorporated (HW), operator of a competing store on East 53rd Street, is for infringement of some of A&F's registered trademarks using the word 'Safari'. It has had a long and, for A&F, an unhappy history. On this appeal from a judgment which not only dismissed the complaint but canceled all of A&F's 'Safari' registrations, including several that were not in suit, we relieve A&F of some of its unhappiness but not of all.
The complaint, filed in January, 1970, after describing the general nature of A&F's business, reflecting its motto, "The Greatest Sporting Goods Store in the World," alleged as follows: For many years A&F has used the mark 'Safari' on articles "exclusively offered and sold by it." Since 1936 it has used the mark on a variety of men's and women's outer garments. Its United States trademark registrations include:
Trademark Number Issued Goods
Safari 358,781 7/26/38 Men's and Women's outer
garments, including hats
Safari Mills 2 125,531 5/20/19 Cotton Piece goods
Safari 652,098 9/24/57 Men's and Women's outer
garments, including shoes
Safari 703,279 8/23/60 Woven cloth, sporting goods,
apparel, etc.
A&F has spent large sums of money in advertising and promoting products identified with its mark 'Safari' and in policing its right in the mark, including the successful conduct of trademark infringement suits. HW, the complaint continued, has engaged in the retail marketing of sporting apparel including hats and shoes, some identified by use of 'Safari' alone or by expressions such as 'Minisafari' and 'Safariland'. Continuation of HW's acts would confuse and deceive the public and impair "the distinct and unique quality of the plaintiff's trademark." A&F sought an injunction against infringement and an accounting for damages and profits.
HW filed an answer and counterclaim. This alleged, inter alia, that "the word 'safari' is an ordinary, common, descriptive, geographic, and generic word" which "is commonly used and understood by the public to mean and refer to a journey or expedition, especially for hunting or exploring in East Africa, and to the hunters, guides, men, animals, and equipment forming such an expedition" and is not subject to exclusive appropriation as a trademark. HW sought cancellation of all of A&F's registrations using the word 'Safari' on the ground that A&F had fraudulently failed to disclose the true nature of the term to the Patent Office.
HW having moved for summary judgment, Judge Lasker granted this only in part, 327 F.Supp. 657 (S.D.N.Y.1971). He held, 327 F.Supp. at 662, that: Although "safari" is a generic word, a genuine issue of fact exists as to whether the plaintiff has created a secondary meaning in its use of the word "identifying the source" and showing that "purchasers are moved to buy it because of its source."
On the other hand, he concluded that A&F had no right to prevent HW from using the word 'Safari' to describe its business as distinguished from use in the sale of a particular product 3 a conclusion we do not understand to be disputed; that HW had not infringed A&F's registered mark using the word 'Safari' under its brand name on a "classical safari hat" or in advertising this as "The Hat for Safari" since such use was purely descriptive, 327 F.Supp. at 664; that HW had also not infringed by using the term 'Minisafari' as a name for its narrower brimmed safari hats, and that HW was entitled to use the word 'Safariland' as the description of an area within its shop and as the name of a corporation engaged in the wholesale distribution of products imported from East Africa by an affiliate, Lee Expeditions, Ltd., and in the "Safariland News," a newsletter issued by HW and Lee Expeditions, 327 F.Supp. at 664-65. With respect to shoes he concluded that both parties had used the word 'Safari' in a fanciful rather than a descriptive sense and hence that plaintiff might have a valid infringement claim it it could establish a secondary meaning, 327 F.Supp. at 665.
On A&F's appeal this court reversed and remanded for trial, 461 F.2d 1040 (2 Cir. 1972). Most of Judge Thomsen's opinion for the court concerned the issue of appealability, as did most of Judge Timbers' concurring opinion and all of Judge Feinberg's dissent. Intimating no opinion on the ultimate merits, this court concluded "that genuine issues of fact exist which made it improper to enter a summary judgment finally denying even in part the injunctive relief sought by plaintiff." Id. at 1042.
Judge Ryan, before whom the action was tried on remand, ruled broadly in HW's favor. He found there was frequent use of the word 'Safari' in connection with wearing apparel, that A&F's policing efforts thus had evidently been unsuccessful, and that A&F had itself used the term in a descriptive sense not covered by its registration, e. g., in urging customers to make a "Christmas Gift Safari" to the A&F store. After referring to statements by Judge Lasker that 'Safari' was a "weak" mark, 327 F.Supp. at 663, the judge found the mark to be invalid. 'Safari,' the court held, "is merely descriptive and does not serve to distinguish plaintiff's goods as listed on the registration from anybody else's"; while such terms are afforded protection by the Lanham Act if they come to identify the company merchandising the product, rather than the product itself, A&F had failed to establish that this had become the situation with respect to 'Safari'. 4 The opinion did not discuss A&F's assertion that some of its marks had become incontestable under § 15 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1065. The court entered a judgment which dismissed the complaint and canceled not only the four registered trademarks in suit but all A&F's other registered 'Safari' trademarks. 5 A&F has appealed.
It will be useful at the outset to restate some basic principles of trademark law, which, although they should be familiar, tend to become lost in a welter of adjectives.
The cases, and in some instances the Lanham Act, identify four different categories of terms with respect to trademark protection. Arrayed in an ascending order which roughly reflects their eligibility to trademark status and the degree of protection accorded, these classes are (1) generic, (2) descriptive, (3) suggestive, and (4) arbitrary or fanciful. The lines of demarcation, however, are not always bright. Moreover, the difficulties are compounded because a term that is in one category for a particular product may be in quite a different one for another, 6 because a term may shift from one category to another in light of differences in usage through time, 7 because a term may have one meaning to one group of users and a different one to others, 8 and because the same term may be put to different uses with respect to a single product. 9 In various ways, all of these complications are involved in the instant case.
A generic term is one that refers, or has come to be understood as referring, to the genus of which the particular product is a species. At common law neither those terms which were generic nor those which were merely descriptive could become valid trademarks, see Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. v. Clark, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 311, 323, 20 L.Ed. 581 (1872) (). The same was true under the Trademark Act of 1905, Standard Paint Co. v. Trinidad Asphalt Mfg. Co.,220 U.S. 446, 31 S.Ct. 456, 55 L.Ed. 536 (1911), except for marks which had been the subject of exclusive use for ten years prior to its enactment, 33 Stat. 726. 10 While, as we shall see, p. ---- infra, the Lanham Act makes an important exception with respect to those merely descriptive terms which have acquired secondary meaning, see § 2(f), 15 U.S.C. § 1052(f), it offers no such exception for generic marks. The Act provides for the cancellation of a registered mark if at any time it "becomes the common descriptive name of an article or substance," § 14(c). This means that even proof of secondary meaning, by virtue of which some "merely descriptive" marks may be registered, cannot transform a generic term into a subject for trademark. As explained in J. Kohnstam, Ltd. v. Louis Marx and Company, 280 F.2d 437, 440, 47 CCPA 1080 (1960), no matter how much money and effort the user of a generic term has poured into promoting the sale of its merchandise and what success it has achieved in securing public identification, it cannot deprive competing manufacturers of the product of the right to call an article by its name. See, accord, Application of Preformed Line Products Co., 323 F.2d 1007, 51 CCPA 775 (1963); Weiss Noodle Co. v. Golden Cracknel and Specialty Co., 290 F.2d 845, 48 CCPA 1004 (1961); Application of Searle & Co., 360...
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