Thermos L.L.C.
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| Headquarters | Chicago, IL |
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Key people
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Alex Huang, PhD (CEO) |
| Website | www |
Thermos L.L.C. is the leading manufacturer worldwide of insulated food and beverage containers and other consumer products. The company was founded in 1904. In 1989, the Thermos operating companies in Japan, U.K, Canada and Australia were acquired by Nippon Sanso K.K., Currently known as Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corporation, which had developed the world's first stainless steel vacuum bottle in 1978. They also acquired the original Thermos company in Germany.
The word "thermos" is a genericized trademark used as a name for a vacuum flask. From around 1910 till 1922, Thermos strove for this synonymity, as it was considered free advertising (estimated between $3 and $4 million worth, in 1917). As the company and vacuum flask market grew, it became increasingly protective of its trademark, which it registered in 1923, following a narrow lawsuit victory over flask manufacturer W.T. Grant Co. Starting in 1935, Thermos employed a clipping service to find unauthorized usages and protested to dictionary editors who included "thermos". A 1940 internal memo said the definitions "undoubtedly would be cited against us in a lawsuit to defend the trademark. The best we can do is to try to 'purify' the definition of the word." Into the 1950s, Thermos continued efforts to protect it, creating various products (tents, lanterns, campstoves) bearing the name to affirm it as a brand name, not an item.
In 1958, Aladdin Industries announced intent to sell "thermos bottles", and Thermos sued for infringement. In 1962, Judge Robert Anderson ruled that "thermos" was a generic term, due largely to Thermos' own publicization and lack of diligence in defending the trademark. Aladdin (or any company) could mark its bottles with a lowercase "thermos", while Thermos (then called the King-Seeley Thermos Company), retained the uppercase usage.
Invented in 1892 by Sir James Dewar, a scientist at Oxford University, the "vacuum flask" was not manufactured for commercial use until 1904, when two German glass blowers, Reinhold Burger and Albert Aschenbrenner, formed Thermos GmbH. They held a contest to name the "vacuum flask" and a resident of Munich submitted "Thermos", which came from the Greek word "therme" meaning "heat".
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Wikipedia