Leonard v. White's Golden Lubricator Co.
| Decision Date | 04 May 1889 |
| Citation | 38 F. 922 |
| Parties | LEONARD et al. v. WHITE'S GOLDEN LUBRICATOR CO. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Ohio |
Jordan & Jordan, for respondent.
SAGE J., (orally.)
This is a motion for a temporary injunction to restrain defendant from the infringement of complainants' trade-mark 'Valvoline.' The complainants set forth in their bill that they are, and have been for many years, engaged in the manufacture of lubricating oils; that since about the year 1873 they have used a trade-mark for their lubricating oils the word 'Valvoline,' a fanciful word invented by themselves, and applied to their packages as a trade-mark and that in the month of May, 1881, it was registered under the statutes of the United States. According to the registry certificate, the trade-mark consists of the word 'Valvoline,' as shown in the fac simile attached to the certificate. Extending through the center of it is a half-moon, or crescent, containing dots or stars; but these it is said, may be omitted, and some other device substituted, or they may be omitted altogether, without material change. That the defendants have been using this word as a designation or mark for their lubricating oils is not denied. They do not use the crescent, or half-moon either with or without the dots or stars; but they use the word 'Valvoline' in connection with their own name. That is to say, their oil is sold as 'White's Golden Lubricator Valvoline No. 1. or 2,' and other numbers; and is so labeled. The defense is that 'Valvoline'is a descriptive word; that it is really a compound made up of the words 'valve' and 'oleine;' that its literal signification is 'valve oil;' and that the law of trade-marks does not permit a descriptive word, or rather a word descriptive of the article, to be appropriated as a trade-mark, -- which is undoubtedly the law, so settled that it requires no verification. It would be out of all reason to say that a man should not be at liberty to sell a gun as a gun because some other person had chosen to appropriate that name as a trade-mark for the guns he wanted to sell. And hence no person has any right to appropriate as a trade-mark a word of the language which is descriptive of the article to which the trade-mark is applied. But that is quite different from the proposition presented in this case. Here there was no such word as 'Valvoline.' The article sold was known in the language and to the trade as lubricating oil. ...
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