JACK DICKSON AND BENJAMIN HARROW, AS COPARTNERS DOING BUSINESS AS MIAMI VENTILATED AWNING SHUTTER COMPANY, PETITIONERS,
v.
PAUL RIMMEIR AND GERMAINE RIMMEIR, AS COPARTNERS DOING BUSINESS AS SEA VIEW VENTILATED AWNING SHUTTERS, RESPONDENTS
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The Florida Supreme Court granted certiorari to clarify its prior decision in Rimmeir v. Dickson regarding trademark and trade name infringement. The court addressed confusion arising from the lower court's amended decree, which failed to properly account for both firm name symbols and product designation symbols in fashioning the injunction and damages award.
The lower court's amended decree must be set aside and remanded because it failed to properly account for both symbols designating the firm and those designating the products of the defendant. The decree should be framed to address infringement affecting both the firm name and the product designation.
“Confusion has arisen from the use of 'trade name' and 'trademark' without clearly designating the things to which the terms should apply.”
Identifies the core problem the court is addressing—ambiguous terminology in the lower court's decree and the court's prior opinion.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceMiami Ventilated Awning Shutter Company sought relief against Sea View Ventilated Awning Shutters for allegedly using the word 'ventilated' in their t…
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DREW, Chief Justice.
The petition for certiorari seeks to have an amended final decree by the lower court set aside because it fails to conform with the governing principles announced by this court in the appeal of the case—Rimmeir v. Dickson, Fla.1955, 78 So. 2d 732.
Confusion has arisen from the use of “trade name” and “trademark” without clearly designating the things to which the terms should apply. This court affirmed paragraph (a) of the original decree granting an injunction against, “ ‘using the word “ventilated” * * * in their trade name or in their trademark * * * ’ ”. Then, in reversing the damage section of the decree, which again used the terms “ ‘trade-name and trademark’ ”, this court made a statement which only referred to “trade name” infringement.
We do not need to distinguish between trademarks and trade names for the purposes of this petition; indeed, current scholarship uses the term “trademark” to include “trade name” in its sense of a nontechnical symbol designating goods from a common source. See Note, Developments In The Law — Trademarks And Unfair Competition, 68 Harv.L.Rev. 814, 824; .Handler and Picket, Trademarks And Trade Names — An Analysis And Synthesis, 30 Colum.L.Rev. 168, 169.
“While a trademark identifies only goods, a trade name may be the name for goods emanating from a particular source * * or it may be the name under which a particular person or association does business.” Restatement, Torts, Sec. 716, Comment A,
The Lanham Act, federal trade-mark law, defines the term “trademark” to include symbols designating goods, but restricts “trade name” to symbols designating firm names. 60 Stat. 427 (1946), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1051-1127 and § 1127. This must have been the basis for the trial judge’s understandable confusion.
In order to correct the misunderstanding which was fostered by our original opinion, we state that the decree below should be framed so that the injunction and the determination of damages take into account both the symbols designating the firm and those designating the products of defendant.
Certiorari is granted, with directions to the chancellor to enter a decree consistent with the original mandate of this court as explained by the foregoing opinion.
THOMAS and THORNAL, JJ., and PATTERSON, Associate Justice, concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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State ex rel. Paul Rimmeir v. Milledge, 104 So. 2d 355 (Fla. 1958)…the parties appeared by and through counsel and oral argument was heard by the court. The previous opinions of this court upon which our mandates were based are as follows: Rimmeir v. Dickson, Fla.1955, 78 So. 2d 732; Dickson v. Rimmeir, Fla. 1957, 93 So. 2d 82; and Rimmeir v. Dickson, Fla.1957, 98 So. 2d 787. By these decisions it was established as the law of this case that the rule of damages contended for by the respondents Dickson and Horrow, which was incorporated in the decree first entered by the r…
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Rimmeir v. Dickson, 98 So. 2d 787 (Fla. 1957)…PER CURIAM. We here review, on certiorari, the lower court’s second amended final decree entered pursuant to the mandate of this court in Rimmeir v. Dickson, Fla.1957, 93 So. 2d 82. The amended decree here reviewed authorized further proceedings “so as to permit the plaintiffs to make a ‘definite showing of specific damages, if they can, resulting from infringement of plaintiffs’ tradename and trademark by defendants’.” Assu…
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Rimmeir v. Dickson, 107 So. 2d 372 (Fla. 1958)…ing and that Sea View was not prohibited from describing its awning as “ventilated” except in the few particulars denominated “unfair competition” in our former opinions, see Rimmeir v. Dickson, Fla.1955, 78 So. 2d 732; Dickson v. Rimmeir, Fla.1957, 93 So. 2d 82; and Rimmeir v. Dickson, Fla.1957, 98 So. 2d 787, it is obvious that the number of plaintiffs' lost sales attributable to the unfair trade practices charged against Sea View would be the purest speculation. For example, Horrow testified that his sal…1 / 2
Authorities Cited
- Rimmeir v. Dickson, 78 So. 2d 732 (Fla. 1955)