“Aspirin” was seized during the war. After the war, the treatment of seized property, including trademarks, varied.
I think that the USA never ratified the treaty of Versailles? So any decision about how seized property would be treated in the USA wasn’t dictated by that treaty?
My understanding is that Bayer lost “Aspirin” in the USA because it was sold by the government. I know that other countries didn’t all steal things like that, but I don’t know how it worked in the USA, and, in any case “Aspirin” was a major political issue all on it’s own: it may have been treated differently.
Genericisation of “Aspirin” in the USA, if it happened, happened later. I have a vague idea that in some places, genericisation was a side effect of Bayer loosing control of the trademark during a war, but I don’t think that was the case in the USA.
It looks like the story is a little more complicated than that. Bayer’s US assets were seized by the Office of Alien Property Custodian, and sold at auction to Sterling Drug for $5.3M. I can’t tell what happened then, but perhaps Sterling mismanaged the trademark at that point, letting it become genericized. Relatively recently (in 1994), Bayer apparently bought back the trademark rights for $1B. However, as best I can tell this only lets them market “Bayer aspirin”, since aspirin by itself is no longer protected.
Food and alcoholic beverages are rife with this sort of thing.
Let’s take the world of bourbon whiskey. There are really 3 segments here- the distiller, the ager/blender, and the actual branding. Some distilleries produce raw bourbon that other companies age and bottle. Others may age it themselves, but blend it/age it such that they produce several brands from the exact same batch.
For example, when Heaven Hill finishes a distilling run, that raw bourbon goes into casks to be aged. But nobody knows at that point what actual product it will be. Some time later, one of those casks might end up in value-priced Evan Williams. Or if it’s aged longer, it might end up in Henry McKenna, or one of the Elijah Craig versions, depending on how long it is aged, or where in the rickhouse.
Similarly, there’s a huge industrial distillery in Indiana called Midwest Grain Products (MGP) who sells primarily raw distillates. One of their popular ones is an unaged 95% rye whiskey that multiple brands (George Dickel, Bulleit, Angel’s Envy, High West, Redemption, Templeton and Filibuster) use as a starting point for their specific rye whiskies. They all age them differently, and in the case of Dickel, run them through the Lincoln county process of charcoal filtration like other Tennesee whiskies.
All of the big distilleries do these things- it kind of reminds me of the whole Lexus/Toyota thing. Knob Creek is Jim Beam’s premium brand, and is the same stuff off the still as the other Beam whiskies (White, Black, Old Crow and Booker’s). It’s just aged differently and blended differently.
I’m not exactly sure what the OP’s gripe is about; something’s brand rarely has a direct correlation to who/where it’s actually manufactured, or anything like that.
On that subject, there’s a brand of rum called Havana Club. Like you might expect from the name, it’s made in Cuba. Well, mostly. If you see Havana Club rum for sale in the US, it’s actually made by Bacardi in Puerto Rico, and has absolutely no relationship to the Havana Club rum for sale in the rest of the world. Apparently, the US doesn’t doesn’t recognize trademark protection for Cuban companies, thus allowing Bacardi to sell rum under the Havana Club brand in the US.
(I)n 1977, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Buick each produced a unique 350-cubic-inch displacement V8. It was during the 1977 model year that demand exceeded production capacity for the Oldsmobile V8 and as a result, Oldsmobile began equipping most full size Delta 88 models (those with Federal emissions specifications) with the Chevrolet 350 engine instead. Although it was widely debated whether there was a difference in quality or performance between the two engines, there was no question that the engines were different from one another. Many customers were loyal Oldsmobile buyers who specifically wanted the Rocket V8, and did not discover that their vehicle had the Chevrolet engine until they performed maintenance and discovered that purchased parts did not fit. This became a public relations nightmare for GM.
Interesting case in that GM owned all those makes and it was no secret. Ford owned Mercury and Lincoln, and owned a chunk of Mazda. The Ford Courier pickup was the same truck as a Mazda pickup. I am in fact surprised to hear that as late as 1977 they were not using all the same engines on similar models across makes.
And Ford and Chrysler both had always shared the same engines between their Ford/Mercury/Lincoln and Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge/DeSoto/Imperil makes, and no one cared. GM was unique in having each division develop their own engines. The Olds/Chevy engine thing was basically the result of having spent decades telling people that an Olds engine was better than a Chevy engine and worth paying more for, and then having it come back to bite them when they started sharing engines between makes like everyone else was already doing.
The same happened with Cuban cigars. The companies that made Cuban cigars in Cuba were nationalized, their owners went to the US or elsewhere, and these owners fully expected to be able to use their trademarks to produce cigars elsewhere. Problem was, the new Cuban government disagreed, and produced same-blended cigars under the trademarks that it now claimed to own.
So you might get a Montecristo, Bolivar, H. Upmann, or Cohiba in the US, and it will be very different from the Montecristo, Bolivar, H. Upmann, or Cohiba that is available in the rest of the world. I’ve smoked all of the above in both the US and Canada (where genuine Cuban cigars are easily available), and while the American offerings under these names are enjoyable, they are definitely not the same flavour profile as the Cuban cigars made in Havana, under the original names and blends, that stock my humidor in Canada.
In the time since the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban government has taken out trademark protection for its cigar brands in the rest of the world, which is why the only country that gets the non-Havana, but same name cigars, is the USA.
I’m still a little hung up on the idea that people think that their cars or whatever are 100% manufactured by the actual manufacturer, and that it’s some sort of breach of trust or something if they have parts from another one, or that the car is just a rebadged version of something else.
It seems a bit naive in the 21st century to put too much stock in a brand name, as the way that things work is that your item may have parts from multiple other companies as part of the finished whole. Or even in the case of electronics technology, the actual chips themselves are often sourced from elsewhere.
Even at that, there are brand names, and there are manufacturers, and they don’t always line up. And even when they do, it may not be what you think. I mean I own a VW that is from Tennessee, with an engine built in Mexico. In theory it’s a “German” car, but that’s a bit of a stretch, as it wasn’t assembled in Germany of all-German parts.
Sometimes it’s weirder; a company may sell a brand AND the associated facility. So you might (hypothetical) have a Maytag dishwasher made by Haier after a purchase, but built in the same old Iowa dishwasher plant that they always were. So how does that work in those people’s heads? Is it a Maytag, or a Haier? Is that kosher or not? Is today’s Twinkie really a Twinkie, now that they’re owned by a different company, but still produced in the same factory?
I just think in today’s landscape, Caveat Emptor is a good principle to maintain. You can’t often put too much merit on a brand name anymore, as those have been being bought and sold for decades now.
I know a couple more Chinese examples but within China; trying to fool our own rubes
Chinese sports brand ANTA bought the rights to the Italian brand FILA within China. They can legally put the FILA brand on their own product lines.
The British supermarket chain Tesco tried to enter the Chinese market unsuccessfully, but after selling all its supermarkets, most still carry the Tesco branding.
The last example illustrates how complicated all this can get:
Nanjing Automobile Group / SAIC motors bought the rights to failed British carmaker MG Rover’s car designs, but at that time could not secure the branding rights, so went instead with “Roewe”, and a very similar badge.
The company has been very successful within China, and has started exporting cars, where the cars are now allowed to carry the MG (not Rover) badge.
This is complicated because:
There is still a British subsidiary of MG that is also still using the MG badge
The “real” Rover badge is now owned by Tata Industries, of India
“Land Rover” of course became a separate company decades ago and I think is currently owned by Ford
A somewhat happier case than the one you mention is the franchise Wild Bill’s, a fast food joint along the lines of a Roy Rogers
But that article doesn’t get one thing correct – several franchisees DID open their Wild Bill’s restaurants, even without a corporate headquarters, advertising and promotion center, or suppliers. They simply decided to do it all on their own. I know, because one of these opened on Route 18 in East Brunswick, NJ, not far from me. I understand that some others tried, too.
They made a valiant effort, but it really helps if you have a home office that can advertise on TV and can buy supplies in bulk. Eventually they went under.
The name “Burger King” in Australia was taken by somebody else. When American Burger King came to Australia, they bought his “Burger King” outlets, but not the name. So American Burger King became “Hungry Jacks”.
Then … when the “Burger King” trademark expired in Australia (because, remember, the business had been sold) , Burger King USA came back into Australia as “Burger King”, in competition with the “Hungry Jacks” master franchise. So which was the ‘real’ Burger King? Well, eventually the courts decided that the ‘real’ Burger King was Hungry Jacks, and all the “Burger King” outlets were eventually rebranded and brought into the Hungry Jacks franchise.
While we’re in Australia: Mars Bars are made by the Mars Company. But they are a different product than the old American Mars Bar, or the new American Mars Bar. When Mars Junior broke up with his Dad, he took the Milky Way bar to the UK, and called it a Mars Bar.
And Rice Krispies are called Rice Bubbles – because “Rice Krispies” are corn flakes made out of rice. I don’t know if they are still available in Australia – but I see that on the Australian Kellogs web site, all the links to “Rice Krispies” are broken …
I don’t follow that story, and the way you present it can’t be quite right. First, a sale of a business does not lead to an expiry of a trademark. Trademarks can expire if they remain unused over prolonged periods - once you register a trademark, you have a certain period within which you need to become commercially active using it, and if you don’t (or if you do at first but then cease using it), the trademark registration can be deleted. But there mere act of selling an existing business will not remove trademark protection.
Second, I find it unlikely that a court would rule on what a “real” Burger King is. Courts can rule on who is entitled to a disputed trademark, and they can order someone who is using someone else’s trademark without permission to stop doing so. But if someone is running a business using a trademark lawfully, then courts will not order that person to rebrand the business on the grounds that it’s “really” something else.
Yes, the owner had sold all his fast-food outlets, so he was no longer using the business name. Eventually, it expired, because he did not use or renew it.
C’mon, leave me a little leeway for the story: the court ruled that the Burger King master franchise owned the rights to the Burger King master franchise, even though he wasn’t using that name. And Burger King USA was trying to force him to use the trade mark “Burger King”, for their own reasons, which they could have done if they’d been able to void the master franchise agreement by setting up in competition to their own (franchised) business.
Worked for GEHC relatively recently. Worst place I ever worked. Only made it 4 years before I had to get out. Before I worked there I thought Dilbert was funny. Now I think it’s tragic.
