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It's some evil genius market segmentation on behalf of Pyrex management. This sort of thing subverts the usefulness of trademarks. You buy from a traditionally

It's some evil genius market segmentation on behalf of Pyrex management. This sort of thing subverts the usefulness of trademarks. You buy from a traditionally upright company, but they just bait-and-switch you on the strength of their trademark and you might as well have bought any product labelled as pyrex. This is why I like the concept of an "origin mark" that links to a full record of the whole supply chain for the product. Companies already have that information, exposing it makes buyers able to make [more] rational decisions and then capitalism can actually work to improve products. That said, using the same trademark for different products in this way should invalidate the trademark (maybe UK TMA1994 S3 can be used in this way??).

crote 1y ago
How would this even work? Consider the following scenarios: - Company is fully acquired as-is, nothing changes to the product. - Business division is spun off as-is, nothing changes to the product. - Company closes current factory, outsources production as-is to another factory in a different country, nothing changes to the product. - Company makes minor changes to recipe, nothing substantial changes. - Company uses different recipe in current factory using current tooling, product is substantially different. - Same factory is used, production line is completely retooled, product is essentially unrelated. - Original factory is closed, original company now buys imitation product from a 3rd party factory and still uses the original trademark. - Trademark is sold, slapped on completely unrelated product. Clearly it isn't as simple as bait-and-switch. There are plenty of scenarios where a lot can change while the product stays the same, and there are a plenty of scenarios where almost nothing changes and the product is completely different. It gets even murkier when you look at product lines instead of individual products: at what point do you revoke the trademark when they sloowly switch to the cheaper recipe as part of the regular replacement cycle, with all new products only using the budget option and all the legacy premium products getting retired? And how is it going to work for anything more complicated than glassware - where the quality difference isn't a plain "borosilicate glass or not"?
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  >- Company uses different recipe in current factory using current tooling, product is substantially different. The product has ingredients, the product gets a label, the product label links to the ingredients; each ingredient had a label, that tree of labels links back ... this already happens, when an ingredient (which child itself be a product) is found to be inferior or spoiled the manufacturer can check their own products made with that batch of ingredient. 'All' we would be doing is exposing this data. Change suppliers, there code on the product changes (that could be by keeping a table of product UUID matched to batch number). Someone mixed peanuts in with the macadamia nuts and supplied 100 different manufacturers, now the public can look up those products that were affected just as much as the suppliers can. Someone bought a cheaper metal, for their bicycle frames, that shows in the product information linked from the origin mark. Someone changed the recipe of their chocolate bar to have more filler ingredients ... that should already show on the ingredients list. A company change their GPU, say, to use slower RAM, that shows in the product info as an ingredient. Binning? Not much help for that. Different manufacturer or different factory, that would show. It would expose a lot of information considered currently try to hide. Doesn't really do anything for fraud except that if you claim someone is your supplier (still) and financials don't show continuing payments then it's clear there is fraud there. Any further thoughts, very happy to discuss. I'm keen to work this up into a feasible system. pbhj AT alicious , com

crote 1y ago

How would this even work? Consider the following scenarios: - Company is fully acquired as-is, nothing changes to the product. - Business division is spun off as-is, nothing changes to the product. - Company closes current factory, outsources production as-is to another factory in a different country, nothing changes to the product. - Company makes minor changes to recipe, nothing substantial changes. - Company uses different recipe in current factory using current tooling, product is substantially different. - Same factory is used, production line is completely retooled, product is essentially unrelated. - Original factory is closed, original company now buys imitation product from a 3rd party factory and still uses the original trademark. - Trademark is sold, slapped on completely unrelated product. Clearly it isn't as simple as bait-and-switch. There are plenty of scenarios where a lot can change while the product stays the same, and there are a plenty of scenarios where almost nothing changes and the product is completely different. It gets even murkier when you look at product lines instead of individual products: at what point do you revoke the trademark when they sloowly switch to the cheaper recipe as part of the regular replacement cycle, with all new products only using the budget option and all the legacy premium products getting retired? And how is it going to work for anything more complicated than glassware - where the quality difference isn't a plain "borosilicate glass or not"?

pbhjpbhj 1y ago
>- Company uses different recipe in current factory using current tooling, product is substantially different. The product has ingredients, the product gets a label, the product label links to the ingredients; each ingredient had a label, that tree of labels links back ... this already happens, when an ingredient (which child itself be a product) is found to be inferior or spoiled the manufacturer can check their own products made with that batch of ingredient. 'All' we would be doing is exposing this data. Change suppliers, there code on the product changes (that could be by keeping a table of product UUID matched to batch number). Someone mixed peanuts in with the macadamia nuts and supplied 100 different manufacturers, now the public can look up those products that were affected just as much as the suppliers can. Someone bought a cheaper metal, for their bicycle frames, that shows in the product information linked from the origin mark. Someone changed the recipe of their chocolate bar to have more filler ingredients ... that should already show on the ingredients list. A company change their GPU, say, to use slower RAM, that shows in the product info as an ingredient. Binning? Not much help for that. Different manufacturer or different factory, that would show. It would expose a lot of information considered currently try to hide. Doesn't really do anything for fraud except that if you claim someone is your supplier (still) and financials don't show continuing payments then it's clear there is fraud there. Any further thoughts, very happy to discuss. I'm keen to work this up into a feasible system. pbhj AT alicious , com