Wilder v. Wilder
Wilder v. Wilder
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
After a careful examination of all the evidence bearing upon the issues involved in this case, we have no doubt, but what the object of J. B. Wilder’s visit to Pittsburg in August, 1867, was to have moulded and made for the firm of J. B. Wilder & Co. bottles for their stomach bitters as nearly similar as possible with the bottles used by Edward Wilder, without having them in every respect identical. The appearance of the bottles connected with the evidence on that subject shows a studied effort to have appellants’ bottles and the labels thereon so strikingly similar to those used by the appellee as to deceive and mislead the public. The appellee had expended large sums of money in advertising and making public the virtues of his medicine and seems to have succeeded in inspiring the public with the same confidence in its curative qualities that he himself had. The popularity of his medicine was increasing constantly, owing to his untiring energy in retailing it all over the country by his traveling agents and his lavish expenditure of money for that purpose. The appellants, so far as appears from this record, had never advertised their medicine in a single paper, and were evidently looking to the resemblance between their bottles and medicine and those of Edward Wilder as the only means of its successful introduc
The medicine itself is harmless and it does not appear that the public or any individual has been injured by its use. If it was composed. of poisonous compounds or of such ingredients as would likely injure those using it, there might be some reason for refusing the relief sought. The appellants, however, not satisfied with using the trade mark of the appellee, a fact mutually admitted by them in their answer, are also conceding for the purposes of the defense a knowledge on their part that the medicine is valueless and an imposition on the public; “that it lives by its success in misleading the public in buying it for virtues it assumes, but has not, when it appears from the proof that they are making the same medicine out of inferior compounds and relying upon the reputation of appellee’s medicine, acquired at an expenditure of many thousand dollars, for its sale. There is no evidence of any deception or fraud practiced by the appellee unless it exists in the extravagant statements of the curative qualities of his bitters and, although one must be very credulous to believe in the representation as to the wonderful and many virtues of the medicine, still this court will not presume intentional wrong on the part of the appellee in the ab
The judgment is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.