United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of Ohio

“ This is a motion for a temporary injunction to restrain defendant from the infringement of complainants' trade-mark, "Valvoline." The complainants set forth in their bill that they are, and have been for many years, engaged in the manufacture of lubricating oils; that since about the year 1873 they have used as a trade-mark for their lubricating oils the word "Valvoline," a fanciful word invented by themselves, and applied to their packages as a trade-mark ”

“ It would be out of all reason to say that a man should not be at liberty to sell a gun as a gun because some other person had chosen to appropriate that name as a trade-mark for the guns he wanted to sell. And hence no person has any right to appropriate as a trade-mark a word of the language which is descriptive of the article to which the trade-mark is applied. ”

“ The defendant in this case has substituted its own name for that of the complainants, in connection with the word "Valvoline," so that there is no pretense that the defendant is selling lubricating oils as the oils of the complainant, because it is clearly stated in their labels to be "White’s Valvoline Oil;" ”