THE DECEPTIVE USE OF ONE'S OWN NAME. 257 only be distinguished by his name. Then the courts must, in order to give adequate protection, require the defendant to take some affirmative action. This they will do if the character of the articles imitated make it possible, but they will not rashly interfere with defendant's business or impose unreasonable restrictions upon him. In England the usual form of injunction is stated by A. L. Smith, L. J., to be against " selling, etc., without clearly distinguishing his make from the old make." ^ In the United States it can hardly be said that there is any usual form ; the Supreme Court in a case relating to the use of the name of a patented sewing machine after the name had become publici juris by reason of the expiration of the patent, granted an injunction prohibiting its use, " without clearly and unmistakably specifying in connection therewith that such machines are the product of the defendant or other manufac- turer, and therefore not the product of the Singer Manufacturing Co." 2 The value of such general decrees as these depends on the construction given them in case of contempt proceedings. If they are interpreted as requiring radical efforts to prevent any one from being misled, such for example as those prescribed in Picon v. Picon,^ then they are all that could be desired and the English form at least does seem to require that something effective be done; but the form used in the Singer case might be literally complied with without giving up the phrase " Singer Machines " if the defendant added the words " made by the June Mfg. Co." Such an addition might perhaps be sufficient to prevent deception in the case of a comparatively expensive article such as a sewing machine. But on cheaper commodities, the buyers would often not read beyond the first two words and the defendant's goods would still sell as " Singer's " almost as readily as the genuine. To permit the imitation of such short names used by buyers and sellers to describe the goods is very dangerous ; and it is not necessary, as every honest purpose of the defendant could be accomplished by stating that his machine ** operates by the Singer method." In Meyers v. Dr. B. L. Bull Vegetable Medicine Co.* the extent of the injunction to be granted was the subject of special consid- eration by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals of the - 1 13 L. T. R. 3; cf. however the detail injunctions in the Brinsmead case quoted supra, pages 252-3. 2 Singer Mfg. Co. v. June, 163 U. S. 169. 8 Infra, page 259. * 58 Fed. Rep. 884.
