Dole Food Co. v. Patrickson, 538 U.S. 468, 15 (2003)

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482

DOLE FOOD CO. v. PATRICKSON

Opinion of Breyer, J.

ed. 1990) ("The term ['owner'] is . . . a nomen generalissimum"—a "term of the most general meaning" or "of the most general kind"—"and its meaning is to be gathered from the connection in which it is used, and from the subject-matter to which it is applied"). See also Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 420, 431 (2000) ("We give the words of a statute their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning, absent an indication Congress intended them to bear some different import" (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added)).

Thus, this Court has held that "shipowne[r]" can include a corporate shareholder even though, technically speaking, the corporation, not the shareholder, owns the ship. Flink v. Paladini, 279 U. S. 59, 62-63 (1929) (emphasis added). Moreover, this Court has held that a trademark can be "owned by" a parent corporation even though, technically speaking, a subsidiary corporation, not the parent, registered and thus owned the mark. K mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U. S. 281, 292 (1988) (opinion of Kennedy, J.) (emphasis added) (noting "the inability to discern" which "entit[y] . . . can be said to 'own' the . . . trademark if . . . the domestic subsidiary is wholly owned by its foreign parent"); id., at 318 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("It may be reasonable for some purposes to say that a trademark nominally owned by a domestic subsidiary is 'owned by' its foreign parent corporation"); id., at 319 ("A parent corporation may or may not be said to 'own' the assets owned by its subsidiary"). Similarly, here the words "other ownership interest" might, or might not, refer to the kind of majority-ownership interest that arises when one owns the shares of a parent that, in turn, owns a subsidiary. If a shareholder in Company A is an "owner" of Company A's ship, as in Flink, then why should the shareholder not be an "owner" of Company A's subsidiary? If Company A's trademark can be said to be "owned by" its shareholder, as in K mart, then why should Company A's subsidiary not be said

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