After a couple days of research, my curiosity itch is thoroughly scratched, and I am confident I have a
pretty good timeline, which I have organized in table format.
Notes:
All the data on the left was derived from ads in trade journals, Popular Science, etc. The data on the right was taken directly from the US Patent and Trademark database. I will try to gather up my sources and post some bonafides later.
As you can now see for yourself what I was alluding to earlier, there were several more handoffs than commonly discussed on various vintage tools sites (here on GJ, AA, Pawpaw, etc), and the sequence is not what has been reported prior on other GJ threads.
There are a couple anomalies
.
/ I found no record of Vaco Products Company ever owning the TM for Plierench. That they made them is no question, obviously. They ran some ads in 1968 and 1969, but not many, and the tool is not included in the 1968 catalog or a 1969 flyer.
/ The original TM (706,606), by Plierench Company of America, had no assignments. Meaning, there is no record inside the USPTO database of it being transferred to another business entity. At some point, and I don't know how, Mssrs Samuel and Joseph Kaplan, d.b.a. American Plumbing Supply Co., had to have ended up with rights to it, because in the record for the Masterform Tool Company TM (906,630), it was assigned to Masterform, in mense, from the Kaplan brothers, vis-a-vis a law firm handling their creditors. (They were in all kinds of debt, being sued by banks, etc, and they probably sold it for cash.) Note that their business address is
the same address that Plierench Co. of America was using since 1958 and American Plierench Corp'n was using since 1938! That leads me to believe American Supply Co. was just another name change, or they assumed control somehow. There is zero doubt that the rights to the TM went in rather rapid succession from Masterform to a company called Plierrench Tools, Inc., and from Plierench Tools, Inc. to Galland, Henning, Nopak, which still owns it.
I will keep digging on those two areas for a bit, but the rest of the info is validated.
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Housekeeping: I was thinking about putting this at the end of the main Eifel-geared Plierench thread, or woody's original thread, but the former is mainly examples and discussion of the early tools, and the latter is stuck up on the General Tools discussion board, and it would be abrupt on either one. It fits here because the subject here led to the general discussion of the red rubberoid jobbies and the later transitions. I'll x-link this to those threads and add this one to A-Z Index in the Sticky as 'Later Versions' or something like that for ease of finding it later.
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