Algoma Lumber Co. v. Federal Trade Commission

The petition presents for consideration a review of orders made by the Federal Trade Commission on June 8,1931, in the so-called “White Pine Cases” requiring the petitioning lumber manufacturers to cease and desist from using the word “white” in conjunction with the word “pine” in connection with the sale in interstate commerce of lumber manufactured from the species of pine tree bo-tanieally known as pinus ponderosa.

Petitioners herein are twelve of a group of fifty manufacturers on the Pacific Coast, against which the Commission issued similar complaints on May 23, 1929. Each of these concerns was charged with the interstate sale of lumber under various terms, including the phrase, “white pine,” with the alleged result of misleading and deceiving the trade and public to the injury of competitors and the public, and that the same is an “unfair method of competition forbidden by section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act” (15 US *619 CA § 45). The term employed by eaeli of petitioners hero is “California White Pine.”

“To sustain the orders of the commission, three requisites must exist: (1) That the methods used are unfair; (2) that they are methods of competition in…