About a hundred years ago, there was a company called Bell, whose primary product was glass jars used for home canning. Then they got into aeronautical instruments during one of the wars, which eventually extended to aerospace (they made the Hubble’s optics, for instance). Nowadays, Bell Aerospace is around, but they’ve spun off the canning jars to a different company.
Ball?
I’m assuming Ball was the original company and Bell spun off from them.
From what I can tell Bell Aircraft and Ball Corp are both from Buffalo, NY, but I don’t see any references to Ball on Bell’s wiki page or vice versa. But Ball’s wiki page does mention aerospace.
I think Bell and Ball are unrelated.
It gets worse. It’s owned by BMW.
I was surprised many years ago to find that Goodrich, formerly B.F. Goodrich, which I knew as a tire manufacturing company*, had completely gotten out of the tire business in 1986. They were into aerospace and chemicals after that. Now, they’re into nothing, because they’re part of UTC Aerospace.
You can still see the name on tires, though, because Michelin bought the tire business.
Similarly, American Optical used to be one of the biggest optics manufacturers in the world, and certainly in the US. Not only did they likely manufacture your eyeglasses, but they made everything your eye doctor used in measuring your eye. That big thing that puts lenses in front of your eyes (which looks like a pair of glasses designed and drawn by Jack Kirby) where they ask "Is it better this way or this way is called a phoropter. They invented it. The company was broken up in the 1980s, with the last two parts – the AO Monoplex division (which made the most eerily real-looking artificial eyes out of white Delrin plastic) and AOtec LLC (which embodied what remained of the R&D division and the plastic injection-molded optics division) were sold off in 2004. You can still buy AO Glasses, but AO Eyewear has been sold twice, with only the name remaining.
The Todd-AO company was spun off for making the lenses and things for Michael Todd’s widescreen movies, but that format has long been defunct. The name lived on in Todd-AO sound, which I still used to see in the closing credits of movies. They were finally bought, in 2014, by the company SoundDogs, which basically runs a sound effects library.
*One of my favorite ads was a two-page spread with a photo of a clear sky. The copy read something like “It’s the Goodrich Blimp!” Of course it’s GoodYEAR that has the blimp. GoodRICH was “that other tire company starting with “Good””
Pyrex. No longer borosilicate glass kitchenware sold by Corning. Instead, standard junky soda lime glass sold by World Kitchen/Corelle after they bought the brand.
However, Corning still owns the Pyrex trademark for laboratory glass, and is still high quality borosilicate. I think it may own the international trademark as well, so it’s just US Pyrex that’s junk. I don’t know if anyone sells borosilicate kitchen glassware in the US anymore.
Bell and Ball both made glass jars and other packaging but they were never part of the same company, according to Ball’s history website. Interestingly, both companies got into aerospace businesses. Ball canning jars are now made by another company.
https://www.ball.com/na/about-ball/overview/history-timeline
The Ball brothers became the money behind Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.
Dammit, how could I have missed Ball Aerospace and Ball jars (I worked closely with Ball Aerospace for a number of years). I always found it funny that the same logo is found on some of the highest tech (space qualified optics and electronics) and lowest tech (a glass jar).
Pepsico/Quaker intend to continue to sell the current Aunt Jemima products under a new brand name, of course. Once they start doing so, I highly doubt that they would be willing to sell off the Aunt Jemima brand. For one thing, it would cause consumer confusion in the marketplace, when you (the person/company who buys the brand) begin selling your non-PC syrups and mixes. Secondly, selling off the brand name, and thus specifically enabling someone to cater to consumers who don’t care about those racist overtones, would be a PR disaster for Pepsico.
I strongly suspect that they will maintain ownership of the brand name, and use it just often enough to keep it from falling into public domain, for those very reasons.
/hijack
I don’t think trademarks like brand names can fall into the public domain like copyrighted material can.
“Public domain” is the wrong term, but trademarks can be genericized if not enforced. Aspirin, for example.
I admit that I am not an expert on intellectual property, so my apologies if I butchered which term to use. The point is still that, if there’s a risk that Pepsico might lose control of the Aunt Jemima brand name if they don’t use it, they will likely use it just often enough to keep that from happening.
A perfect example for the OP is Nokia phones. The Nokia company is still around, and selling stuff, but Nokia–branded cell phones are designed and sold by a completely different company (which licensed the name for cell phones).
Similar to the Tates Watch Company who made super high quality instruments for decades. They decided to branch out and started making compasses, but they had some problems with the metallurgy and the cases diverted the compass needles. Which led to the common expression “He who as a Tates is lost.”
Another example that fits the OP: Jenn-Air (now JennAir) kitchen products are made by Whirlpool these days after they bought that company. Meanwhile JennAir backyard grills are made by the Chinese maker Nexgrill, who licensed the JennAir name and symbols for that purpose.
I know Lenovo bought IBM’s PC division a decade ago; are they still marketing any products under the IBM name?
But Volvo is no longer Volvo. They were bought by Zhejiang Geely Holding in Red China.
No. Lenovo is it’s own brand.
Kenmore (sears) appliances were a prime example of this.
I don’t believe that Sears actually manufactured any appliances – they just designed/spec’ed items which were then built for them by various other appliance companies, with a Kenmore logo on them.
For example, Kenmore electric dryers were mostly made by Whirlpool or Maytag. The model number will tell you who actually built the unit, and when you need repair parts, they will often be labeled under that name.