Heath v. Wright

Case No. 6,310. Injunction — Patent Medicine. Chancery will not interfere by injunction in questions of trade mark between the vendors of patent medicines, being quack medicines; such questions having too little merit to commend them on either side. [Cited in Kohler Man'uf’g Co. v. Beeshore, 59 Fed. 574.]

This was an application by the complainant for an injunction to restrain the defendant from using the name “Kathairon” for a compound for toilet purposes, manufactured and vended by both parties. The complainant alleged that this term was his trade mark, which the defendant denied, alleging that the word “Kathairon” was in common use, like that of “Magazine,” &c. Both Kathairons consisted essentially of a mixture of castor oil and brandy;, and it appeared by the labels upon the bottles which contained the respective Kathairons, that the complainant claimed for his, that it would infallibly cure “scald head, tetter, ringworm, erysipelas, itch, barber’s itch, shaving pimples, salt rheum, chapped hands, stings, cuts, chilblains, swellings, inflammations, rheuma-tisms,” &c.: and that it would “almost instantly relieve sympathetic attacks of nervous headache,” besides “restoring the hair, and preventing it from turning gray.” "It would be labor lost,” his label declared, “to enumerate the wonderful properties of this invaluable preparation; its reputation, coextensive with the civilization of the globe, makes all praise superfluous, all exaggeration impossible.” The claim of the defendant was not quite so extensive/ He declared his to be a “sovereign remedy for tetter, itch, scald head, salt rheum, ringworm.” He made no mention of its power to cure erysipelas, but professed that It was able to cure “barber’s itch, chapped hands, chilblains, stings and bites of insects, inflammations, swellings;” &c., besides “preserving the hair and keeping it from turning gray,” and dispelling nervous headache. And he averred that his Kathairon had had “millions of patrons.”