CASE DIGEST: East Pacific vs. Director of Patents

THE EAST PACIFIC MERCHANDISING CORPORATION vs. THE DIRECTOR OF PATENTS and LUIS P. PELLICER

G.R. No. L-14377, December 29, 1960 

FACTS: Marcelo T. Pua filed with the Office of the Director of Commerce an application for the registration under Act 666 of the composite trademark consisting of the word "Verbena" and representation of a Spanish lady, with specific evident set of designs. Respondent Luis P. Pellicer filed an opposition to the application on the following grounds: (a) that the picture of a lady is common in trade and the name "Verbena" is the generic name of a flower and, therefore, neither may be exclusively appropriated or registered by the applicant.

The Director of Patents favored the Pellicer, alleging that the term "Verbena" is "generically descriptive or misdescriptive of the products, namely lotion, face powder, hair pomade and brillantine, while the representation of a Spanish lady is not only deceptively misdescriptive of the source or origin, but also common in trade," and, resulting to the denial of East Pacific’s registration.

Issue: Whether or not the term “Verbena” is registerable.

Held: The term "Verbena" is descriptive of a whole genus of garden plants with fragrant flowers used in connection with cosmetic products. Regardless of other connotations of the word, the use of the term cannot be denied to other traders using such extract or oils in their own products. It follows that the Director of Patents correctly held the term to be non-registerable in the sense that petitioner company would be entitled to appropriate its use to the exclusion of others legitimately entitled, such as oppositor Pellicer.

In a leading case, Caswell vs. Davis, 17 Am. Rep. 233, 241, 242, the court, on a similar issue, said:

There is no principle more firmly settled in the law of trademarks, than that words or phrases which have been in common use and which indicate the character, kind, quality and composition of the thing, may not be appropriated by any one to his exclusive use. In the exclusive use of them the law will not protect. . . .

The claim that the petitioner is entitled to registration because the term "Verbena" has already acquired a secondary significance is without merit. The provisions of law (Rep. Act No. 166, sec. 4) require that the trademark applied for must have "become distinctive of the applicant's goods", and that a prima facie proof of this fact exists when the applicant has been in the "substantially exclusive and continuous use thereof as a mark or tradename, for five years next preceding the date of the filing of the application for its registration".