Kidd v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 01 October 1879 |
| Parties | KIDD v. JOHNSON |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
APPEAL from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Louisiana.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Mr. M. F. Morris for the appellant.
Mr. E. M. Johnson, contra.
The question presented in this case relates to the ownership of a trade-mark used by the complainants on packages and barrels containing whiskey manufactured and sold by them in Cincinnati, and arises out of the following facts:——
In 1849, one S. N. Pike, doing business in that city as a wholesale dealer in whiskey, adopted as a trade-mark for his manufacture the words, 'S. N. Pike's Magnolia Whiskey, Cincinnati, Ohio,' enclosed in a circle, which he placed on packages and barrels containing the liquor. Between that date and 1863 he was in partnership with different persons doing business there under the name of S. N. Pike & Co. In 1863, having dissolved his connection with others, he took as partners two of his former clerks, Tilney and Kidd, continuing the original firm name, and soon afterwards opened a branch house in New York City. The same trade-mark was used by the new firm as it had been by the preceding firm, without any change. At this time, and subsequently until its sale in 1868, the real property in Cincinnati, upon which the business was conducted, and the distillery, with its fixtures and appurtenances, belonged to Pike individually. In 1868, the firm removed its entire business to New York City, and Pike sold the real property in Cincinnati, and the stills, tubs, engines, boilers, tubing, and all apparatus in his distillery, for the consideration of $125,000, to the firm of Mills, Johnson, & Co., who were also engaged in the manufacture and sale of whiskey at that place. At the same time, Pike executed and delivered to the purchasers a separate instrument, stating that, having sold his premises to them, he extended to them and their successors the use of all his brands formerly used by him in his Cincinnati house.
Mills, Johnson, & Co. continued for some years the manufacture and sale of whiskey on the premises thus purchased, using, without objection from any one, the brands previously used by S. N. Pike & Co. They were succeeded in business by the complainants, who, it is admitted, are entitled to all the rights which they possessed in the trade-mark in question. S. N. Pike died in 1872, and his surviving partners formed a new partnership, under the name of George W. Kidd & Co., which was subsequently dissolved, and to its business Kidd, the appellant in this case, succeeded.
The complainants finding that whiskey bearing this trade-mark, manufactured by the firm of Tyra, Hill, & Co., of St. Louis, was sold in large quantities by dealers in New Orleans, filed the present bill to enjoin the dealers from selling or trafficking in whiskey contained in packages thus marked. By an amendment to the bill the defendant Kidd was made a party. He filed an answer and cross-bill, asserting title to the trade-mark as surviving partner of the firm of S. N. Pike & Co., and setting forth that Tyra, Hill, & Co. were acting under a license from him.
The principal question for determination is whether the complainants, claiming under the sale of Pike to their predecessors, or the defendant Kidd,...
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