VEM (brand)
VEM is an umbrella brand for electric drives and machines . It is protected in over 90 countries. Approx. 20 to 25 million machines and systems were sold under this brand.
history
The original meaning of the abbreviation VEM can no longer be proven beyond doubt. The "V" stands for "Vereinigung (united)", even if it was later translated as " nationally owned " in the GDR . The letters "E" and "M", on the other hand, are indisputably the abbreviation for electrical engineering .
In 1948 the three letters were part of a company name and not yet a trademark . At that time, 24 companies with around 7,000 employees had come together to form the VEM Association of Publicly Owned Enterprises in Electrical Engineering (VVB VEM) . In 1951, most of these companies became legally independent, were spun off from the association through administrative channels and were no longer able to use the VEM mark introduced on the market. In contrast, only the protection of the three letters VEM as a trademark helped. In 1952 it was registered with the Office for Invention and Patents of the GDR and with the patent office of the Senate of Berlin (West) by the Transformatoren- und Röntgenwerk Dresden (TuR). At the end of the 1950s, around 30 companies were using the UEM symbol nationally and internationally.
The scope and costs of branding increased and on December 13, 1961, the trademark association was founded as a registered association. The evolving export structure of the companies in the following years often meant that already existing individual symbols such as TuR did not always harmonize with the VEM brand in every export country. In the 1980s, for example, the association increasingly focused on the most widely represented electrical engineering industry.
After the political change in 1989/1990 only the 15 companies in the electrical engineering industry continued to use the trademark. The continuation of the brand was assured. Today it is considered one of the few East German industrial brands that still exist without interruption.
Trademark Association VEM
meaning
As a registered association, the trademark association VEM e. V. protects the interests of its member companies producing electrotechnical products by maintaining, maintaining and registering collective and individual brands of the VEM. He ensures the further implementation on the market and tries to improve the traffic rating.
The following companies were among the members of the association in 2011:
- VEM Holding GmbH
- VEM Vermögensverwaltung GmbH
- VEM Sachsenwerk GmbH , Dresden
- VEM motors GmbH , Wernigerode
- VEM motors Thurm GmbH, Zwickau
- VEM transresch GmbH, Berlin
history
The association was founded on December 13, 1961 by 32 companies in the industry in the legal form of a registered association . The association gave itself a statute and punctuation. In accordance with the members' export intentions, more and more international registrations were made. In 1970 the association and symbol statutes were revised. It was included that the trademark association VEM e. V. is "a voluntary association of companies with different types of ownership".
With the political change in the GDR , the structure of the members changed significantly. Since the brand had undisputedly achieved worldwide recognition in the 1980s - in 1988 45,000 individual products with the VEM mark were produced every day and 25% of them were exported abroad - it was essential for 15 companies of the former Dresden electrical engineering company to continue to use the brand. Another 66 former UEM member companies gave up the trademark.
The association was entered in the register of associations of the Dresden District Court on July 12, 1992 under number 1457 . The VEM trademark has been legally protected since April 14, 2000 (application number 000792325) as a registered European community trademark in all member states of the European trademark convention.
VEM-Antriebstechnik AG , founded on April 5, 1990 in Berlin , became the VEM Group , which was acquired in 1997 by the Merckle family of entrepreneurs . In the end, the association emerged stronger from the transition to a market economy.
literature
- VEM Group (Ed.): People, Motors and Metal. A tour through 125 years of industrial history . Amalia Verlag, Dresden 2008, ISBN 978-3-9808680-4-4 .
- A brand from the world. 1961 to 2011: 50 years of the trademark association VEM e. V. Trademark Association VEM e. V., 2011.