Muench-Kreuzer Candle Co., Inc., a Corporation v. Lester F. Wilson

This is a patent suit involving Wilson’s Magi-Color candle and Muench-Kreuzer’s Make-a-Rainbow candle. Wilson holds patent No. 2,464,361 for Magi-Color. The Make-a-Rainbow, which as it burns achieves the same result, is unpatented.

A little candle history is pertinent. Mention of candles is found in the Bible. And their use has continued through the centuries. For many years in the modern era one of the objectives of candle makers has been to eliminate the dripping of wax as the candle burned. Finally, having achieved a virtually dripless candle, at least dripless in the absence of wind, men turned about face, at least in the novelty field, and sought to achieve again the maximum drip or messiness at- tamable from a candle. A “dripper” is easily obtained by reducing the size of the wick in relation to the body of wax or by keeping the same wick and increasing the circumference of the surrounding wax. Too small a wick for the size of the body reduces the amount of capillary attraction of hot wax into the wick; thus the hot wax in the bowl under the flame cannot all be consumed in burning. So it runs or drips over the sides.

And into this trade of making dripping candles has come…