Expensive Futility of the United States Trade Mark Statute

Every lawyer of much experience knows the client who tip-toes into his office, closes the door carefully, and with a great show of secrecy announces that he has discovered or invented the best name for a soda cracker, a patent medicine, a soft drink, or what not, that human ingenuity ever conceived. He wants it protected before any one can steal it from him. He wants it "Copyrighted." This is the expression most commonly used. He seems to be under the impression that some incantation can be performed by means of which he will be able to secure to himself the exclusive use of his new name for crackers or whatever it may be.

His lawyer is probably under some similar delusion and sets about to find a way to endow his client with his discovery, enormous secrecy being religiously maintained all the while. He too has a hazy notion that he can copyright something whereby his client can exclude the world - all of which is due to a very general ignorance of what a trade-mark is and how the right to one is acquired.