Coca Cola Co. v. Koke Co. of America, 254 U.S. 143 (1920) (Cross, 8 th Ed., p. 309). Company Profile John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, invented a caramel-colored carbonated soft drink in 1836. His bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, named the beverage Coca-Cola after two of its ingredients, coca leaves and kola nuts. Asa Candler bought the Coca-Cola Company in 1891 and within seven years, he had made the soft drink available throughout the United States, as well as in parts of Canada and Mexico. Candler continued to sell Coke aggressively and to open up new markets, reaching Europe before 1910. Ain doing so, however, he attracted numerous competitors, some of which tried to capitalize directly on the Coke name. Background and Facts The Coca-Cola Company sought to enjoin the Koke Company of America and other beverage companies from, among other things, using the word Koke for their products. The Koke Company of America and other beverage companies contended that the Coca-Cola trademark was a fraudulent representation and that the Coca-Cola was therefore not entitled to any help from the courts. The Koke Company and the other defendants alleged that the Coca-Cola Company represented that the beverage contained cocaine (from coca leaves), which it no longer did. The trial court granted the injunction against the Koke, but the appellate court reversed the lower court's ruling. Coca Cola appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Opinion Of course a man is not to be protected in the use of a device the very purpose and effect of which is to swindle the public. But the defects of a plaintiff do not offer a very broad ground for allowing another to swindle him. The defence relied on here should be scrutinized with a critical eye. The main point is this: Before 1900 the beginning of the good will was more or less helped by the presence of cocaine, a drug that, like alcohol of caffeine or opium, may be described as a deadly poison or as a valuable item of the pharmacopoeia according to the rhetorical purposes in view. The amount seems to have been very small, but it may have been enough to begin a bad habit and, after the Food and Drug Act, long before this suit was brought, it was eliminated from the plaintiff's compound. Coca leaves still are used, to be sure, but after they have been subjected to a drastic process that removes from them every characteristic substance except a little tannin and still less chlorophyll. The cola nut, at best, on its side furnishes but a small portion of the caffeine, which now is the only element that has appreciable effect. That comes mainly from other sources. It is argued that the continued use of the name imports a representation that has ceased to be true and that the representation is reinforced by a picture of coca leaves and cola nuts upon the label and by advertisements, which however were many years before this suit was brought, that the drink is an 'ideal nerve tonic and stimulant,' etc., and that thus the very thing sought to be protected is used as a fraud. The argument does not satisfy us. We are dealing here with a popular drink not with a medicine, and although what has been said might suggest that its attraction lay in producing the expectation of a toxic effect, the facts point to a different conclusion. Since 1900 the sales have increased at a very great rate corresponding to a like increase in advertising. The name now characterizes a beverage to be had at almost any soda fountain. It means a single thing coming from a single source, and well known to the community. It hardly would be too much to say that the drink characterizes the name as much as the name the drink. In other words "Coca-Cola" probably means to most persons the plaintiff's familiar product to be had everywhere rather than a compound of particular substances. We see no reason to doubt that, as we have said, it has acquired a secondary meaning in which perhaps the product is more emphasized than the producer but to which the producer is entitled. The coca leaves and whatever of cola nut is employed may be used to justify the continuance of the name or they may affect the flavor as the plaintiff contends, but before this suit was brought the plaintiff had advertised to the public that it must not expect and would not find cocaine, and had eliminated everything tending to suggest cocaine effects except the name and the picture of the leaves and nuts, which probably conveyed little or nothing to most who saw it. It appears to us that it would be going too far to deny th plaintiff relief against a palpable fraud because possibly here and there an ignorant person might call for the drink with the hope for incipient cocaine intoxication. The plaintiff's position must be judged by the facts as they were when the suit was begun, not by the facts of a different condition and an earlier time. The decree of circuit court is reversed. The decree of District Court is affirmed.

1. That the decision of SCOTUS protecting Coca Cola's trademark was handed down well before the Lanham Act of 1946 demonstrates the significance of common law protection of trademarks.

2. Both Coca Cola's recipe for its caramel-colored carbonated soft drink and its trademark for the beverage belong exclusively to Coca Cola in perpetuity, provide the recipe is continuously protected as a trade secret and the trademark is renewed every 20 years.

3. Koke Co. of America and the other defendants enjoined from using the trademark for Coke were guilty of trademark blurring or tarnishment.

4. Coca-Cola Company's lawsuit to enjoin the Koke Co. of America and other beverage companies from using the word Koke for their products is a good example of aggressive mark policing.

5. If Coca Cola either had not eliminated the existence of cocaine from its beverage or had not advertised that it ceased doing so, it risked the loss of trademark protection because the USPTO has broad authority to reject a mark if it is "immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter."