Antique German parallel jaw pliers

[Shiftless]

From this morning’s nearby estate sale comes a pair of pliers. 5 inches overall length.
If your not familiar with this design, it’s advantage is that the jaws remain parallel as they open and close.

Marked Falsing Werk, Zella-Mellis Germany
That’s the town where the original Walther Arms manufacturing plant was.
It bears a German patent number of 389389

Internet searches found very similar tools referred to as Sargent.

Does anybody have something to ad to this unusual find? Date of manufacture?

 

[Stuart in MN]

I think the Sargent / Bernard parallel jaw pliers are the originals (and are still available new today). These maybe were manufactured under license?

 

[d42jeep]

If they were made under license from Bernard, they should have a German Shepherd or Rottweiler on them. They do look just like my Bernard examples.
-Don

 

[Shiftless]

d42jeep:
Thanks for chiming in with your $.02 worth.
To me, they look really old. I’ll show them to you in person when that’s convenient.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Internet searches found very similar tools referred to as Sargent.

To me, they look really old.

They are. The "Bernard" that Stuart and Don are referring to is William A. Bernard, a prolific inventor, who worked for the William Schollhorn Company. That design was first patented in the late 1800's and Bernard continued adding different applications to the original design, with over a dozen patents, all assigned to Wm. Schollhorn. If you google "DATAMP Schollhorn" you will get a link for the Schollhorn page on DATAMP and see a good many of Bernard's patents. Sargent bought out Schollhorn in 1948 and continued using the "Bernard" name.

I suppose it's possible that the beloved Bernard appropriated the design from an even older German patent. That would be a stunning development. But I suspect Stuart is correct about licensing. What's odd is that even the marking style - around the pivot - is the same, so perhaps Schollhorn even performed 3rd party manufacturing of them for Falsing Werk, which is something I didn't know they were doing for anyone. I don't think I've ever seen Bernard pliers that weren't either antique or vintage Schollhorn's, or postwar Sargent's.

EDIT: A link to the GJ Schollhorn thread, with plenty of examples of Schollhorn pliers, including my own, is provided here.

 

[Shiftless]

Thanks lugz
You’re a wealth of information.

My pliers bear a marking DM 389389. Is that like DPMA?

That’s a German patent number, right? DM? (I know DM also stands for Deutschmark)

Can the same design be patented independently in Germany and in the USA?

 

[Private Lugnutz]

My pliers bear a marking DM 389389. Is that like DPMA? That’s a German patent number, right? DM? (I know DM also stands for Deutschmark)

The only initials I am familiar with on German tools are D.R.P., for Deutches Reichs Patente, or D.R.P.A., D.R.P.Ang. or D.R.P.Angem., for Deutsches Reichs Patente Angemeldet, which is basically Patent Pending. I found a record for a German patent DE389389C granted Feb 6, 1924 on Google Patents, linked here. There is no description and I don't know what the "C" suffix means. But it is for pliers.

Can the same design be patented independently in Germany and in the USA?

I am not an international patent law expert, Shiftless. I know that all kinds of tools and things that were patented in England and elsewhere ended up getting "appropriated" and patented here, and vice versa. A famous (or infamous, as you please) case is Hugh Vogl. He worked here in the US as a jobber for York vise of the Czech Republic, copied the design, filed it as his own in the USPTO system, and the rest is Wilton vise history.

EDIT: What's odd in this case of your pliers is that DE389389C was granted 26 years after the US patent and, again, it's even marked like the Wm. Schollhorn BERNARD pliers. So maybe getting that "DM" mark translated is key. Maybe it's a license? I don't know. I am stumped.