Back in 2016, GE sold their appliance division to Haier - a Chinese company.
The company however keeps selling appliances with the GE logo, and the unaware consumer may think it’s the same brand as before.
Are there other examples of similar product-lines in the market ? My opinion is this kind of branding deceives the customer.
Also - is there any copyright or trademark law that addresses the use of one company’s logo by another company ? (Not looking for legal advise - just general discussion)
LG for sure and possibly also Whirlpool.
It’s been a while since I’ve done any appliance shopping but the last time I bought a fridge, walking through the showroom is was blatantly obvious how many of the refrigerators were coming out of the same plant with little more than some cosmetic differences and a different badge.
Harman International owns many audio brands such as JBL, Bang and Olufsen, Infinity and Revel along with more than a dozen other brands. They leverage them fro high end to low end products to suit an individual customers needs. They outright bought the brand names, so no copyright issues.
Samsung does the same with TV’s and other consumer products, and as noted in the link they own Harman International.
When I check their websites, LG Appliances is actually owned by LG which also makes TVs, Electronics etc. Similarly Whirlpool is an appliance manufacturer and owns the brand. You are correct though that they maybe getting made in the same factory.
What I am really interested is in a brand pretending to be something it is not. GE Appliances is not part of GE, the company that makes Airplane engines and power equipment. And yet GE appliances copies their logo / fonts everything to make it look like it’s GE.
Are there others doing so ? And is this okay with Branding / Copyright practices ?
Of course it’s OK. GE sold the rights to call the appliances “GE” along with the sale of the factory and tooling. Haier already manufactured appliances, so the big thing they were buying was the brand. A couple of decades ago, GE sold the small appliance division to Black & Decker, and I think for a while they were still sold as GE.
The Wikipedia article says, “The company markets Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, JennAir, Amana, Gladiator GarageWorks, Inglis, Estate, Brastemp, Bauknecht, Ignis, Indesit, and Consul.” So if you’re buying a KitchenAir or Maytag machine, you’re actually getting one from the Whirlpool Corporation.
I’ve seen Westinghouse TV’s over the last 20 years and as far as I know when I was a kid Westinghouse never made a TV. Companies are being bought and sold all the time, it’s been going on for over a 150 years back when railroads bought up each other, probably longer. I believe that there was a game called Monopoly that bore this out, the purpose of the game was that the winner eventually bought everything.
True, but do any of those exist as separate corporations, or did Whirlpool buy the whole company and thus get the brand?
I’d say if you are buying an XYZ-branded appliance, look up XYZ corporation customer service and is told by them “We don’t make that.”, that’s a different issue than if you look for XYZ customer service and find that they’ve been a part of RTY for ten years.
I think you are missing the point. Are there other products by “ Maytag, KitchenAid, JennAir, Amana, Gladiator GarageWorks, Inglis, Estate, Brastemp, Bauknecht, Ignis, Indesit, and Consul” which are not owned by the Whirlpool company?
Whirlpool owns these brands totally. It’s not like it is sharing a brand name.
So my question still stands - Are there products in the market with same branding but owned by different companies ? Specifically with the intent of deceiving the customer as to who she/he is buying from?
Sometimes they buy the entire company and then sell off the manufacturing plants and just keep the name. Other times they keep the factories and just change the sign on the building.
In my hometown we had a big Fram factory that made filters and it was bought by Honeywell. They still produce Fram filters but the sign out front says Honeywell, Fram Division. Friends who work there still say they work at Fram.
It may be deceptive in your eyes but it is absolutely legal to do so. The acquisitions are public knowledge and make the news when they happen (I.e. Wall Street Journal and more).
Another example from the GE-verse: GE bought RCA in 1986. They continued to sell RCA-branded products. The next year they sold their own consumer electronics business as well as the RCA consumer electronics business to Thompson SA. Thompson SA (now Technicolor SA) retained rights to the RCA trademark (as well as the GE meatball) for consumer electronics products. Technicolor SA currently does not sell anything with the RCA trademark, but licenses the use of the trademark to about a dozen other companies.
Hell, the Hotpoint brand name (an secondary appliance brand that GE used to manufacture and sell) was acquired in 1918 when GE merged with an electric iron maker who made a product branded “Hotpoint”. So this transferring of brand names and logos between companies is nothing new.
That shocked me so much that I dropped my monocle into my glass of champagne.
On a more serious note, it’s not that rare. Another example from the media business is MSNBC, which did start as a joint ventue between NBA and Microsoft, but the latter holds no shares in it anymore.
I’m not sure if it counts for the purposes of this thread, but for a long time there were two independently owned companies running hotels under the “Hilton” brand. Meanwhile the brand has been reconsolidated by one of the two companies taking over the other.
Does something like Renault heavy trucks count? They were initially built as part of the car company, but split off into their own company while still using the Renault name. Now they are built and owned by Volvo.
Throughout our 125+year history, the GE Trademark has stood the test of time. By licensing the GE Trademark we help our partners leverage the intangible qualities associated with it to drive their own growth. Our focus is on helping our partners extract value in GE’s adjacent markets where brand recognition is strongest.
I’m at a bit of a loss to understand how you were shocked by this? Is it that a Chinese company now owns this brand? You just hadn’t read the newspapers on this?
Global consolidation, especially around manufacturing has been happening for a hundred years. It’s very common that companies decide a business line or brand no longer fits with their overall strategy or portfolio and they sell that brand or business off. Sometimes it gets sold only as a brand, sometimes as a brand plus all the manufacturing facilities etc.
Corporations commonly sell off a brand because the industry that brand competes in is stagnant, and/or highly competitive, with little opportunity for sales or profit growth. Meanwhile their other divisions / industries are growing rapidly and/or more profitable and they need funding to capitalize on that growth.
There are countless, far too many to list without this thread going to 1000 posts. I’d guess that most of the brands you think you know are not owned by the companies you think they are.
I really don’t see how, those GE appliance could still be made in the same GE factory and the same GE “quality”. What’s the difference who owns it?
Yes, there is lots of legislation around copyrights and trademarks, but that has nothing to do with this situation. When you buy or sell a company’s brand (or division) all the copyrights & trademarks etc. are acquired as part of the deal.
That name and brand image are considered an “intangible asset” and sold along with the other assets. The common name is “goodwill” and a dollar value is placed on that that is part of the deal. Deending on the brand itself, those copyrights and trademarks can be more valuable than the rest of the physical assets combined.
Obviously, I haven’t read the contract, but I’ll bet that it says something about how Haier owns the rights to use the brand name in the major appliance business. Another example; the GE light bulb business is owned by a company called Savant.
The KitchenAid company was started in my hometown and they were (and still are) considered a solid product built in the midwest part of the good old USA. But the fact is that since they were bought by Whirlpool the core products are still built there but many of the newer products are build elsewhere and branded KitchenAid. KitchenAid sells knives now, but they are produced in Germany I believe.
The average consumer has no idea how this hierarchy works though. On the show 30 Rock, the network they’re working for, NBC, is owned by the Sheinhardt Wig Company which is owned by KitchenAll, which is, in turn, all under the GE corporate umbrella. Here’s GE’s corporate structure within the 30 Rock world.
Similarly, if these types of things were more well known to the end user, those corporate ‘who owns what’ pictures wouldn’t go viral every few years.
My point being that just Whirlpool owns KitchenAid doesn’t mean they’re not presented as different brands to the end user. If the OP walked into a showroom and saw an $800 Whirlpool Dishwasher and a similar looking one from KitchenAid for $1100, isn’t it equally deceptive whether they’re both owned by Whirlpool or not. You’re paying an extra $300 for the KitchenAid badge, a few cosmetic differences and maybe some other minor things that could arguably be considered upgrades. But the majority of that $300 is for the name.
