One of the topics from the Tuesday night chat was on what trademarks Harmony Gold USA has and when they got them. Zor Master pointed me to the US Patent Office online archives and it's been interesting. The most important documents I've seen so far detail the transfer of Revell's trademarks to Harmony Gold:
http://assignments.uspto....s/q?db=tm&rno=1322324
http://assignments.uspto....s/q?db=tm&rno=1366801
http://assignments.uspto....s/q?db=tm&rno=1392674
Now, the dates of Revell's initial claims with the Patent Office: April '84 for "Robotech Defenders", May '84 for "Robotech" itself, and March '85 for a secondary trademark on "Robotech"...perhaps for the logo design. All three of these were reassigned to Harmony Gold from Revell as of September '86. Revell also had trademarks on "Robotech Changers" and "Robolinks" but there was no transfer of these to Harmony Gold.
Names that Harmony Gold trademarked on their own...dates unavailable:
Of course, all of these involve the Irwin/Matchbox/Playmates toys. There are some blank names so I expect if there are any missing from the toy catalog they'll show up further on in the listings somewhere.
While Revell claimed trademarks on the individual Robotech Defender mecha names in their print advertising, box legal text and in the legal text of DC's comic mini-series, it looks like they didn't file actual paperwork on any of them. VEXAR is a long-standing TM of a DuPont plastics product. THORENS is a name of a Swiss company. NEBO is an actual place name trademarked by a number of companies. ZOLTEK is a company that makes car brake components, their trademark is active. CONDAR and DECIMAX were trademarks in use by other companies at the time, which have since lapsed. AXOID, GARTAN, AQUALO, ZIYON, EXAXES, never were trademarked by anybody. ORBOT was associated with the Mighty Orbots TV show, and that trademark has lapsed. TRIGON is claimed by a great number of companies with several of these trademarks still active.
More to come.




