Ang v. Teodoro
[74 Phil 50 (1942)]

The function of a trade-mark is to point distinctively, either by its own meaning or by association, to the origin or ownership of the wares to which it is applied. "Ang Tibay," as used by the respondent to designate his wares, had exactly performed that function for twenty-two years before the petitioner adopted it as a trade-mark in her own business. "Ang Tibay" shoes and slippers are, by association, known throughout the Philippines as products of the "Ang Tibay" factory owned and operated by the respondent. Even if "Ang Tibay," therefore, were not capable of exclusive appropriation as a trade-mark, the application of the doctrine of secondary meaning could nevertheless be fully sustained because, in any event, by respondent's long and exclusive use of said phrase with reference to his products and his business, it has acquired a proprietary connotation. This doctrine is to the effect that a word or phrase originally incapable of exclusive appropriation with reference to an article on the market, because geographically or otherwise descriptive, might nevertheless have been used so long and so exclusively by one producer with reference to his article that, in that trade and to that branch of the purchasing public, the word or phrase has come to mean that the article was his product.