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fanciful (vs. descriptive) trademark

Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court

Definitions from Case Law

From 240 U.S. 251 - Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company v. Wolf Brothers & Company · 1916Most cited · 623 citing opinions

We do not regard the words 'The American Girl,' adopted and employed by complainant in connection with shoes of its manufacture, as being a geographical or descriptive term. It does not signify that the shoes are manufactured in America, or intended to be sold or used in America, nor does it indicate the quality or characteristics of the shoes. Indeed, it does not, in its primary signification, indicate shoes at all. It is a fanciful designation, arbitrarily selected by complainant's predecessors to designate shoes of their manufacture.

How often courts cite the case defining “fanciful (vs. descriptive) trademark”

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Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “fanciful (vs. descriptive) trademark” — 621 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.