Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MtiflC TIRADE
VOL.
LVIL N o . 21. Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, Nov. 22,1913
SINGLE COPIES, 10 CENTS
$2.00 PER YEAR.
Name Protection Should Be Afforded.
AME protection is something everyone engaged in legitimate trade is interested in seeing
staunchly upheld, and it is to be regretted that in order to protect name property indi-
viduals and corporations are compelled to resort to expensive legal measures. It seems
to be a constant warfare all the while.
In every trade there are infringers, pirates they are usually called, but it is a notable fact that
infringers seldom succeed. In the first place, the fact of imitation alone prevents the imitator from
ever getting an independent good will.
If the imitation is close enough to lead purchasers, without their knowing it, away from the
genuine, it will not, for a long time, remain effective, and people sooner or later will find out that
they have had the imitation palmed off upon them as the original.
To imitate, quite apart from the immorality of it, is not good business, and it seldom succeeds
in any line. If the imitation article is good the imitator gets no credit, for he is invariably looked
upon as a parasite.
Infringing goods or business based upon their sale seldom succeed, for an imitator is usually
a person deficient in two essentials of success—he lacks brains and he lacks morals. If he were
possessed of the rudiments of either he would originate something of his own and not crimp the
work of a successful business organization.
Imitation, therefore, besides being immoral, is characteristic of a simian intellect; but moral
considerations do not generally appeal to the infringer, because usually he has no morals. It is
usually useless to argue with him and point out that an imitation in proportion to a success is ever
destructive, because this implies a certain degree of intelligence which usually is lacking.
The only thing that is left is to sue him, and that should be done promptly, vigorously and
relentlessly. Name protection in every trade should be upheld by retailers, because imitation
products, no matter in what line, have the effect of undermining public confidence in values. There
is no other way out.
After using the sticks and tufts of grass to bring the bad boy down from the apple tree, one
has to resort to hurling the stones, for soft and honeyed phrases, as well as gentle, dove-like meas-
ures, do not seem to have the right kind of effect in preventing one from pirating the goods of
others.
It requires some good, sturdy, sledge-hammer blows. But the protection of a name means the
protection of property, because name values have assumed such proportions that they have gone
even beyond name rights.
They act as well as a guarantee to the public that it can secure certain standard products under
certain names, and if that name standard be pirated, then naturally /^Z^
r^
£u
the protection to the public has crumbled very materially, and that >^jf|\r\(Ti/vi\ \iCVV\(flCVUVviAJL
is where the law should come in. It is supposed to exist for the pro-
tection of society.
N