|
|
L’appelante a renvoyé cette Cour à deux causes américaines: Wella Corporation v. La Maur, Inc. [5] et La Maur, Inc. v. Revlon, Inc. [6] dans lesquelles elle a obtenu la protection de sa marque «Style», destinée à des fixatifs capillaires, contre «Style-Tex» et contre «Style and Set» et «Set & Style» respectivement.
|
|
|
The appellant referred this Court to two American cases, Wella Corporation v. La Maur, Inc.[5] and La Maur, Inc. v. Revlon, Inc.[6], in which the appellant secured protection for “Style”, applied to hair fixatives, as against “Style-Tex” and as against “Style and Set” and “Set & Style” respectively. In neither case did there appear to be any question of the setting of the competing marks in a distinctive design as against the bare use of “Style”. Moreover, there were other considerations there that are not present here. In the Wella case a petition to cancel had been granted by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and its decision was sustained on appeal. The applicant produced documentary and oral testimony but the Wella Corporation relied simply on its own registration and on other registrations containing the word “style” in various forms. In the Revlon case, the proceeding was to restrain infringement of La Maur’s registered mark and the district court judge before whom the case came stated that “La Maur has introduced a superabundance of evidence proving that the La Maur mark ‘Style’ has a strong secondary meaning”, and, again he referred to La Maur as of having shown strong consumer identification for the trade mark “Style”. This is in contrast to the opinion of Gibson J. in the present case that La Maur’s unregistered trade mark was a weak mark.
|
