1. Where a trade name has acquired significance in the mind of the public who understand it as a designation or symbol applying to one's business, equity will relieve against the subsequent use by another of a name so similar as to confuse and mislead the public, to the first user's injury.
2. It is not necessary that one using a trade name which interferes with another's prior right, should have adopted such name with intent to deceive the public or injure that other. The consequences of the act of one so using the trade name, and not the motive for it, determines whether this court should interfere to protect the prior user in the custom, patronage and standing with the trade which he has built up by the use of his trade name.
3. Held, that because the name which complainant is using in his business is so similar to defendant's trade name as to create a false impression in the mind of the ordinary man exercising the caution usually exercised in such cases, and because it appears that persons have been deceived by the similarity in names, defendant's use of his trade name prior, in point of time, to the use by the complainant of his trade name, should be protected by this court by restraining complainant's use of the name in his two stores.
PER CURIAM.
The decree appealed from will be affirmed, for the reasons stated in the opinion of Vice-Chancellor Fielder in the court of chancery.
For affirmance — THE CHIEF-JUSTICE, TRENCHARD, PARKER, LLOYD, CASE, BODINE, DONGES, HEHER, PERSKIE, VAN BUSKIRK, KAYS, HETFIELD, DEAR, WELLS, DILL, JJ. 15.
For reversal — None.