Mr. Olney to Mr. Alexander.

No. 81.]

Sir: I have received your No. 85, of the 17th ultimo. It relates to the question of a formal trade-mark convention with Greece, instead of the declaration signed July 9, 1894, to the effect that the treaty of December 10/22, 1837, between the United States and Greece, conferred upon the citizens or subjects of either country in the dominions of the other the same rights as respects trade-marks, industrial designs, and patterns as such citizens or subjects may enjoy in their own.

You present no argument not heretofore found in your previous dispatches, tending to show the position of the Greek Government in the matter and to confirm your opinion as to the impossibility of concluding a formal convention on the lines of the draft heretofore sent you. Were it not, therefore, for a specific inquiry on your part, your present dispatch [Page 765] might be filed to await the definite decision of that Government, in view of my No. 75, of November 9, 1895, expressing, after mature consideration of the whole subject, the preference and the necessity for a formal convention.

You inquire, after repeating the grounds of your belief that such a convention is impossible of conclusion, “whether in the event of failure to consummate a convention, it is your (my) wish that we should avail ourselves of the advantages afforded by the existing declaration, or should notify the Greek Government of our desire to withdraw from that declaration.”

Mr. Gresham’s instruction, No. 43, of February 21, 1895, and my own, No. 75, of November 9, 1895, are conclusive of the inability of your Government to accept the validity of the signed declaration and of its desire to conclude in its stead a formal convention for the registration of trade-marks. It is presumed you have unreservedly made known this situation to the Greek Government. Indeed, no other deduction is inferable from the desire of your Government to negotiate such a convention.

This being the case, the necessity is not perceived of formally notifying, as you propose, the Greek Government of our desire to withdraw from the declaration.

Even though, as you have heretofore stated and now repeat, that Government maintains that the declaration is valid in that country, it is seriously questioned whether, unless we shall extend to Greek subjects reciprocal treatment here, it would accord our citizens in Greece the privilege of registering their trade-marks in that Kingdom; in other words, grant them the “same rights as are now granted or may hereafter be granted to Hellenic subjects of the most favored nation in all that relates to trade-marks,” etc., as the declaration contemplates.

Under these circumstances the interpretation to be placed upon the matter is exclusively within the competency of the Greek Government, the case arising. Our position is not an ambiguous one, and with its presentation to the Greek Government, as I understand it, and our expressed wish to conclude a formal trade-mark convention, it may be permitted to rest, except so far as you may find it practicable to carry out the wishes of the Department’s previous instructions looking to the conclusion of a formal convention.

I am, etc.,

Richard Olney.