Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III TRADE-MARKS AND WHAT THEY STAND FOR WITHOUT good will all business which is not monopolistic would be temporary—depending as it would have to on casual patronage only. The element of good will—the desire on the part of customers to keep up more or less continuous trade relations and the reasonable expectation of such continuance on the part of the trader, is what gives permanency and stability to business. Good will is dependent on identification. It adheres to the means by which the business or commodity toward which the patron's or purchaser's friendliness is directed, may be distinguished from those toward which this friendliness is not felt or which are unknown and produce no reaction favorable or otherwise. The development of business in the past furnishes curious parallels with present conditions. Similar problems were met, and strikingly similar solutions were devised. The extent of the use of trade-marks is an accurate index of commercial conditions. When trading was face to face, the purchaser of a commodity dealing directly with the producer, a trade-mark was not used because none was necessary. The purchaser necessarily knew whose product he bought, and by returning to the same place was sure again of trading with the same individual and again of purchasing the article desired. The locality of the place was the essential means of identification and the seat of the good will. As soon, however, as a particular maker, by the excellence of his manufacture,acquired a reputation outside of his immediate locality, in order to visualize and perpetuate that reputation he adopted and used a mark to distinguish his product from others. When the eye salves of the Roman oculists became famous, and were sent all over the known world, trade-marks were placed u...