Now that Fox has been split between Fox News (what used to be News Corp) and 21st Century Fox (Disney), who controls the “Fox” brand? Does Disney license the name from News Corp? Is there a separate trust that both companies license the name from? Do both have perpetual, unrestricted use of the name?
There will be several “Fox <something or others>”. Some will be owned by Disney, some by the new Fox Corporation. There doesn’t appear to be any overt plans for a name change on Disney’s part but I would be surprised if there’s a segue over time. First their old component names. Then a Disney prefix added. Then the Fox dropped.
Looking at some of the details I note that there’s a 7 year lease from new Fox to Disney of a studio lot. I think that 7 year time frame may be in mind for other changes as well.
Another company involved in this is good old Sinclair Broadcast Group. They will be acquiring the regional Fox Sports Networks. I suspect that those will be renamed quite quickly given Sinclair’s corporate culture. "Fox Sports … " just doesn’t have the old name brand importance as the movie and TV divisions.
There’s still some remnants that Disney will be required to divest that have “Fox” in the name. What happens with those is TBD.
Trademark sharing isn’t all that unusual. The company once known as Ralston Purina split into multiple parts. The cereal division became a company called “Ralcorp,” the pet food division kept the name “Purina” and eventually was sold to Nestle, and the animal feed division, renamed “Purina Mills,” went to yet another company. Each of them was allowed to use the name Purina (or Ralston) and the Checkerboard logo on the various individual products they took with them.
Another split company: Hewlett-Packard, the computer/printer/etc. people. Split into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprises. The later is often referred to as HPE which is also its ticker symbol. Brand confusion is easy but neither company seems to be bothered by it. If they weren’t split off companies, one of them would be suing the other.
It’s not clear who got possession of the hyphen.
GO CRAZY: https://www.uspto.gov/
TESS is what you want.
I get 2019 Records(s) found for live trademarks. Not all are Fox related, they simply contain the word “Fox”. Many are Fox related. In a quick look, I did not find a plain old “Fox” trademark.
Some other examples of multiple companies that share a trademark:
*Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the famous ultra-luxury car brand now owned by BMW + Rolls-Royce Holdings, what became of the original company founded by Henry Royce, which makes aircraft engines and has other defense and engineering businesses.
*Saab Automobiles, which was sold to GM circa 1990 and is now defunct + Saab AB, the Swedish aerospace company that was the former parent company of the car brand.
A lot of brands that are ~dead or have been partially divested also fit the bill.
E.g., RCA (GE) sold off the rights to numerous lines of products to a bunch of companies. So an RCA TV may be made by an entirely different company from the ones that makes RCA remotes, or RCA antennas, etc.
SHARP brand TVs are made by a different company than Foxconn who now owns the parent company.
Who makes Philips-labeled products depends a lot on what part of the world you are in.
“Big Boy” is shared by (at least) two completely separate companies. Big Boy Restaurants - Wikipedia
Useless trivia: Shoney’s restaurants actually began as a Big Boy franchise but split from the Big Boy concept in the 70s.
You’ll also sometimes find different companies using the same trademark but in different countries. For example there are El Pollo Loco restaurants in both the USA and Mexico, but the US restaurants are a different company from the Mexican ones and have different menus. The chain was founded in Mexico, expanded into the US, but later sold off the US restaurants.
Then there are department stores called Target in Australia, but again are a completely different company from the North American Target stores. I think in this case the Australian company simply purchased the rights to use the trademark in Australia. There’s also an Australian grocery store chain called Woolworth’s, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same deal with them.
In another thread, I looked up the current status of Time-Warner.
Time-Warner Cable had been owned by Time-Warner. It was then spun off into a separate company. Later, AT&T bought Time-Warner and the media division was renamed WarnerMedia*. (And Time Magazine was sold off at some point.) Time-Warner Cable was bought by Charter (after a deal with Comcast was nixed) and is now part of their rebranded (always a good idea :dubious:) Spectrum Cable division.
So for a while there Time-Warner and Time-Warner Cable were separate companies.
- Which still includes the Turner channels, etc.