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2 R.I. 566

Davis v. Kendall

Supreme Court of Rhode Island

Decided September 6, 1850

Supreme Court of Rhode Island · decided 1850-09-06

Tris was an action, on the case- against, the, defendant for pirating the plaintiff’s trade-mark. It appeared that the plaintiff was the original inventor of a medical compound sold by him, by the name of, PainrKiller, that he had been the first to apply this word to such a compound • and that, after said compound had become extensively and favorably known, the defendant manufactured and sold a similar compound, by the name of “ J. A. Perry’s, Vegetable.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1850-09-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently April 1905

1 federal appellate · 5 state decisions

40185018601870188018901900decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Greene, C. J.

¶1 delivered the opinion of the Court.

¶2 The plaintiff has no patent and no exclusive right to the compound called Pain-Killer. He invented the compound and gave it the name Pain-Killer, and this seems to have been the first application of that term to a medical compound. The plaintiff, though not entitled to the compound, is entitled to his trade-mark, and the law recognizes and will protect this right.

¶3 Trade-marks may be, first, the name of the maker; second, symbolical; third, the name of the compound. Of this last kind is the trade-mark of the plaintiff, Pain-Killee.

¶4 All are entitled to make and vend this compound, and to vend it as a similar article to that made and sold by the plaintiff; but no one, but the plaintiff, has a right to sell it as a medicine manufactured by the plaintiff.

¶5 The adoption of the same label as the plaintiff’s, will, of course, be actionable ; and so the adoption of a label so like the plaintiff’s as to mislead the public, would be actionable.

¶6 If the difference be merely colorable, it will not avail the defendant. But if the defendant state in his label, that the article which he sells was made by himself, although he calls it by the same name as the plaintiff, he will not be liable; because he has a right to make and vend the compound, if he vends it as his own, and not *570 as made by the plaintiff. Canham v. Jones, (2 Vesey & Beames, 218.)

¶7 If the ¡defendant, without fraud, '¡use the trade-mark of the .plaintiff, he is still liable. If the -right be violated, it matters not whether it ’be by fraud or by mistake. Millington v. Fox, (3 Mylne & Craig, 339.)

¶8 The whole question in this case is, whether the defendants label is liable to deceive the .public, and to lead them to suppose they are purchasing an article manufactured by the plaintiff, instead of the defendant. The agreed statement of facts does not find that the defendant’s label has deceived any one, and I do not think it will do so, but my associates think otherwise, and judgment must, therefore, be returned for the plaintiff.

¶9 Judgment for the plaintiff.

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