Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/319

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291
HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
291

REVIEWS, 29 T of child, and he is sole beneficiary, his contributory negligence is a good defence. Bamberger v. Citizens' St, R.Co., 31 S. W. Rep. 163 (Tenn. ). See Notes. Torts — Unfair Competition — Fraudulent Simulation. — Declaration that defendant in adopting a particular style of wrapper and in labelling his wares "Thedford & Co.'s Black Draught, " intended to and did trick the public into buying defendant's medicine in the behtf that they were purchasing a medicine of plaintiffs manufacture which was put on the market in similar wrappers, and labelled "Thedford's Black Draught." Defendant demurred. Held^ overruling the demurrer, a plaintiff has a right of action against a defendant who intentionally tricks plaintiffs customers into buying defendant's wares in the belief that they are of plaintiffs manufacture. Thedford Medicine Co. . Curry, 22 S. E. Rep. 661 (Ga. ). The principle here aj plied is not a new one, nor even a new application of an old principle. It is the same principle and the same application of it by virtue of which the common law protected the use of trademarks before their use was protected by statute. Lord Blackburn in Manufacturing Co. v. Loog^ 8 Appeal Cases, 15, at 29, 30. Plaintiff's right which defendant has violated is not a right to the exclusive use of a particular name or a particular kind of wrapper for his wares ; " his right is to be pro- tected 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. " Lord Langdale in Croft v. Day, 7 Beav. 84, at 88. This principle and its application to cases not distinguishable from the principal case are well established in England and America. Perry v. Truefett, 6 Beav. 66 ; Blofieldv. Payne, 4 Barn, & Ad. 410; Sykes v. Sykes, 3 B. & C. 541; Lee v. Haley, 5 Ch. Appeals, 155; Stone v. Carlan, 13 Law Reporter, 360; Nail Co. v. Bennett^ 43 Fed. Rep. 800; Manufacturing Co. V. Manufacturing Co., 138 U. S. 537, at 549. See also 4 Harvard Law Review, 321; 5 Harvard Law Review, 139. REVIEWS. The Mirror of Justices. Edited for the Selden Society by William Joseph Whittaker, with an Introduction by Frederic William Mait- land. London, 1895. The chief value of this publication is the proof it gives that the " Mirror " is valueless. This book had been freely cited by Coke and other lawyers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and Judge Gray not long ago considered at length an extract from it in the very important case of ^V^^^5 V. Z^^/^/ Boats, 11 All. 157. It is therefore well worth while to have its unreliability established j and that this is done will appear from the following statements in the Introduction : " Our author's hand is free, and he is quite able to do his lying for h'mself, without any aid from Geoffrey of Monmouth or any other liar. He will not merely invent laws, but he will invent legislators also ; for who else has told us of the statutes of Thurmod and Leuthfred ? The right to lie he exercises unblushingly. . . . Religion, morality, law, these are for him all one ; they are for him law. . . . That he deliberately stated as law what he knew was not law, if by law we mean the settled doctrines of the King's court, will be sufficiently obvious to any one who knows anything of the plea rolls of the thirteenth century. . . . One word is wanted to make this true ; the word * not. ' Our author knows that as well as we know it. " All this is as true as it is vigorous, and it is evi- dent that a book of which such things can be said is not one to be rashly used as authority.