There is lot more to this than advertising slogans.
-Stanley still owes $250 million to Sears for the name, the payment is due next year. Now the $250 million had been earmarked to the Pension via old Sears Holdings. However KCD LLC held the actual trademarks in Bermuda. So if Eddie bought all the “go forward” one would assume KCD was acquired by Transform Holdco so who knows where the money would go. I’d presume the sale isn’t final until the $250 million is paid.
- if Sears was insolvent at the time of the original deal its null and void. This will be likely be the debate of post bankruptcy lawsuits
- the original sale document doesn’t really seem to have anything that would prevent them from rolling out Craftsman Ultimate.
- Sears does not have to stop using Craftsman in terms of the sale, merely they have to pay a royalty like Stanley is paying now after 15 years.
The Baltimore Sun had an article with this hilarious part...
“To demonstrate customer confusion, Stanley included several social media posts about the Craftsman Ultimate Collection.
In the Craftsman Tool Collectors Facebook group, a consumer asked: “Anyone know anything about the Craftsman Ultimate Collection?” One response: “This is just Stanley garbage repackaged and rebranded.”
The lawsuit claims that two customers responding to Sears’ social media post about the Ultimate Collection confirms that the brand is causing confusion. One customer wrote, “I can tell you these new ultimate series are top notch, much better than the Stanley owned variations.”“
Seems to me Stanley is irritated that they have a poor reputation and Sears found a Chinese supplier to make a better tool. Maybe Stanley should go back to making quality stuff in the US like they claimed they would instead of bickering with Sears about who can relabel Chinese stuff better.
My guess is Stanley hopes Sears would roll over and die. They were trying to get this deal amended in bankruptcy court. They have to know this was a bad deal so long as Sears is around, but they should have known getting into it that Eddie would not let Sears die an easy death. I don’t think Sears would’ve ven be trying this without knowing what they legally can get away with. Since Stanley isn’t a retailer, it would probably be up to Lowe’s or Ace to countermarket Sears’ claims about having the largest assortment.
As far as the post about Loggerhead, Sears won the lawsuit because they dug out a nearly identical wrench patented in the 1960s and used that as the basis for their loggerhead like ratchet.
