and similar retail outlets. Potential purchasers included not only persons skilled in the
paint trade, such as building and painting contractors, but also persons having no
specialized knowledge and wanting merely to perform painting work themselves or by
means of unskilled employees. I doubt very much whether the former, ie persons skilled
in the paint trade would be deceived or confused by respondent's mark Mikacote, but the
position of the latter, ie persons having no specialized knowledge, is by no means so
clear.
44.
In my opinion, the dominant impression or idea conveyed by each of the marks centres
on the word "mica". "Mica" constitutes in each case the first two syllables of the mark. It
is the portion of the mark which makes the initial impact and on which stress is laid in
pronunciation. It is a known word for a known substance. In the painting trade appellant's
use of the word "mica" in its registered trade mark was unique among trade names, until
respondent commenced using the mark Mikacote. The suffixes "tex" and "cote" make
less of an impression, particularly as they appear to be derived from the term "texture
coating" or, at any rate, would be understood by a substantial number of
45
interested customers as being so derived. As, the evidence shows, the term texture
coating is one generally used in the trade to denote the products to which the marks
Micatex and Mikacote were applied. Consequently, a potential customer, with no
specialized knowledge in this field and an imperfect recollection of appel- lant's trade
mark, would tend to recall it as "Mica-something" or "a word starting with mica". At any
rate, in my view, a substantial number of such customers would probably have this type
of recollection. A person with such an imperfect recollection who went, say, to a
hardware store to purchase appellant's product and encountered, or was offered,
46.
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