Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/266

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HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
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246 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. the extent and limitations of this right have been the subject of many adjudications. In the comparatively early case of Croft v. Day (1843),^ we find some of the principles stated and applied. The plaintiff was the manufacturer of Day & M'artin's blacking. The defendant's name was Day, and by an agreement with a friend named Martin he was making blacking under the name of " Day & Martin," and using packages similar to those of the plaintiff. No fac-similes are given in the report, nor is there even a full description of the labels, but the following quotation from Lord Langdale's frequently cited opinion shows the scope and purpose of the decision: — "It has been very correctly said that the principle in these cases is this. That no man has a right to sell his goods as the goods of another. You may express the same principle in a different form, and say that no man has a right to dress himself in colors, or adopt and bear symbols to which he has no peculiar or exclusive right, and thereby personate an- other person for the purpose of inducing the public to suppose either that he is that other person, or that he is connected with and selling the manufacture of such other person, while he is really selling his own. It is perfectly manifest that to do these things is to commit a fraud, and a very gross fraud. I stated upon a former occasion that, in my opinion, the right which any person may have to the protection of this Court does not depend upon any exclusive right which he may be supposed to have to a particular name, or to a particular form of words. His right is to be protected against fraud, and fraud may be practised against him by means of a name, though the person practising it may have a perfect right to use that name, provided he does not accompany the use of it with such other circumstances as to effect a fraud upon others." By, the terms of the injunction the defendant was restrained from selling any composition described as, or purporting to be, blacking manufactured by Day & Martin, in bottles having affixed thereto the labels complained of, or any other labels so contrived or expressed as to represent the composition sold by the defendant to be the same as that sold by the complainant.^ In that case the wrongful character of the defendant's acts was apparent and there can be no question of the correctness of the 1 7 Beav. 84. 2 This decision is followed and similar injunctions granted in Clayton v. Day, 26 Solicitors Journal, Pt. i, 43 (1881) ; Clayton v. Day, 76 L. T. J. 79 (1883) ; Schweitzer V. Atkins, 37 L. J. Ch. 847, 848 (1868) ; James v. James, L. R. 13 Eq. 421 (1872) ; Full- wood V. FuUwood, Weekly Notes for Law Reports, 93 (1873) >' Fullwood v. FuUwood, 9 Ch. D. 176 (1878) ; Holloway v. HoUoway, 13 Beav. 209 (1850).