animal kingdom from the elephant to the bee and the vegetable kingdom from the palm tree to the daisy for a distinctive token to be remembered by.
Yet in spite of the essential crudity of this advertising, it had very early developed the value of the trademark as an indicant of quality in the product to which it was attached. In wills and in other preserved records of property from the sixteenth century trademarks are explicitly named, transferred and bequeathed as valuable property. And one of the surest proofs of the early value of trademarks, as one of the best indications today, is that the trademarks were constantly being imitated or stolen.
Aldus, the great Venetian printer, published in 1518 a specific warning to the public that his competitors in Florence, "seeing they could not equal, have affixed our well-known sign of the Dolphin round the Anchor" to their books, but so "clumsily that anyone," the warning continues, "cannot fail to observe that this is an impudent fraud, for the head of the Dolphin is turned to the left, whereas that of ours is well-known to be turned to the right."
One of the first English printed advertisements (by Caxton, the first English printer) was a handbill or poster of 1440: "Pyes....of Salisbury....good and chepe....if it please any man spirituel or temporel to bye."
