distinctive name
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 241 U.S. 265 - United States v. Coca Cola Co. · 1916Most cited · 25 citing opinions
food and drugs act
A 'distinctive name' may also, of course, be purely arbitrary or fanciful, and thus, being the trade description of the particular thing, may satisfy the statute, provided the name has not already been appropriated for something else so that its use would tend to deceive. A mixture or compound may have a name descriptive of its ingredients or an arbitrary name. The latter (if not already appropriated) being arbitrary, designates the particular product. Names, however, which are merely descriptive of ingredients, are not primarily distinctive names save as they appropriately describe the compound with such ingredients.
How often courts cite the case defining “distinctive name”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “distinctive name” — 75 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.