LONDON LEGAL LETTER. LONDON, Jan. 3, 1897. is no department of English jurisprudence . which has a wider interest for American manufac turers and merchants than that of trade-marks, and at the same time there is none which is in anything like so unsatis factory a condition. It was bad enough before the legisla ture took the matter in hand, but it is infinitely worse since the Merchandise Marks Acts of 1862 and the Trade Marks Act of 1875 and the Patent Act of 1888 were passed. In the days when the common law was the only protection to a manufacturer who had established a distinctive mark and name for his goods, the simple question was whether or not he had acquired a property in the mark or name which he had affixed to his goods. If he had, then, of course the property thus acquired was, like all other property, under the protection of the law, and for the invasion of the right of the owner of such property the law afforded a remedy similar in all respects to that by which the possession and enjoyment of all property is secured to its owners. Now, however, the legislature, in the evident attempt to simplify the matter and increase the protection to the indi vidual while guarding the rights of the public and certain classes of the community, has so complicated the subject that endless confusion is the result. This comes of the endeavor to define what a trade mark must " consist of or contain." If, for example, it is a selected word, "it must be a word having no reference to the character or quality of the goods, and not being a geographical name." It might appear to be a simple matter to conform to this require ment, and so evidently thought the American owner of a process for making an anti-friction metal, which, under the name "Magnolia," has acquired a wide repute, not only in the United States, but all over the world. In order to pro tect the name in Great Britain it was registered here, and was freely admitted to the register, as the article was an alloy of certain metals, of which the word " Magnolia" was in no sense descriptive of the character or quality. In a recent action, however, the validity of the registered trade name was called in question, and those disputing the monopoly which "Magnolia" anti-friction metal had ac quired, raised the point that it was not the subject of regis tration as it was a " geographical name." It was not con tended that there was any town or geographical area in the United Kingdom bearing that name, but Lippincott's Gazeteer was put in evidence to show that in the United States there were no less than twenty-three towns and villages called "Magnolia"! This was considered fatal by the Court, and now that a motion has been filed to take the name off the register it will in all probability succeed.

This should be a warning to other American manufac turers, as there are undoubtedly many of them whose interests in this country rest upon a similarly insecure foundation. The worst of it is that the ruling which seems so great an absurdity has a precedent which has been in voked upon more than one occasion with the same result. A manufacturer of camel's hair belting registered, as his trade name, before the passage of the Act of 1888, the word " Camel." There could be no doubt that it was not a geographical name. But someone who had a fancy to the same name discovered that a very small and unimportant parish in a remote county in the west of England bore that name. The register, therefore, in an application to extend the name to another class, refused to accept the name "Camel " on the ground that it was a geographical name, and upon an appeal to the Board of Trade this ruling was affirmed! It goes without saying that the object the legislature had in enacting the law was to prevent a manufacturer in a given locality from registering the name of that locality as descriptive of his goods to the exclusion of all other resi dents of that locality. It would be a manifest hardship if Jones could register " Yorkshire " sauce and thus prevent every other Yorkshireman from making sauce which he might desire to describe as Yorkshire sauce. It would be a still greater and more inequitable discrimination to give an individual the protection of the register to describe his coal only as " Newcastle " coal, or his tin as the sole "Cornwall " tin. But to successfully contend that a name which is not in its origin geographical, and which has only an acquired and limited use of this kind, is within the spirit of the law, simply shows what gnat-straining can accomplish. It is gratifying to notice that in several of the secular as well as the professional papers which review the work of the Courts during the year which has just closed impor tance is given to the visit of the Chief Justice of England to'the United States and his warm welcome at the hands of the American Bar Association and the people of the United States. It is regarded as a significant incident tending to show the harmony of the relations which exist between the two nations. The proposed International Court of Arbitra tion is another matter which has the support of lawyers and laymen alike. The former may possibly see in it a prospect of employment, but this is a consideration which would not weigh for a moment in their estimation of the advantage it will have in preventing the recurrence of the unhappy feeling which just a year ago strained the relations between these two great countries. STUFF Gow.fi.