Sharp To Americans: You Don't Want to Buy a Sharp-Brand TV (wsj.com)

Sharp has sued China's Hisense Electric, which licensed the Sharp brand for televisions sold in the U.S., accusing Hisense of putting the Sharp name on poor-quality TVs and deceptively advertising them (alternative source). From a report: The court action is the latest effort by Osaka-based Sharp to retrieve the right to use its own name when selling TVs in one of the world's largest markets. Sharp is trying to recover its position as a global maker of consumer electronics. Hisense rejected the allegations and said it was selling high-quality televisions under the Sharp name. The dispute illustrates the risks when the owner of a well-known brand name gives up control over products sold under that name.

Comments

Hit to the brand

[TWX]

Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.

Re:Hit to the brand

[leathered]

My favorite tale of Chinese manufacturing is that factories making genuine products for Western companies have been known to put on extra shifts to turn out knockoffs, using the same machines and tooling that the Western company has paid for. I recall a significant number of fake Cisco products were found to be made in the same factory as the genuine stuff.

Handing your blueprints over to counterfeitors as well as paying for their machines is an almost comical way of slitting the throat of your business.

Tough. Suck it up Sharp.

[Viol8]

You sold the rights to your name to make a quick buck, now stop whining when someone uses it in a way you don't like. If you wanted your name only to be associated with good (ok, reasonable) quality gear you should have kept it in house.

Re:Hisense USA is actually not horrible...

[sl3xd]

Hisense USA is based in Atlanta (Suwanee GA), not China, though their parent company is Chinese.

All that means is that there's a shell company that imports drek from China, handles local customer disservice and warranty non-fulfillment.

Nearly every multinational company does the same thing -- Apple's Ireland shell company has made a lot of news lately as a tax haven, IIRC. That doesn't make Apple an Irish company.