Thermos LLC is a manufacturer of insulated food and beverage containers and other consumer products. The original company was founded in Germany in 1904.
In 1989, the Thermos operating companies in Japan, the UK, Canada and Australia were acquired by Nippon Sanso K.K., which had developed the world's first stainless steel vacuum bottle in 1978,
before it renamed itself
Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corporation
, commonly known as NSHD, is a Japanese multinational industrial gas manufacturer incorporated in the year 1910 as Nippon Sanso Corporation. Company was founded in 1918.
The company is Japan's largest industrial gas producer and among top fiv ...
, as which it remains known in the present day. Taiyo Nippon Sanso also acquired the original Thermos
GmbH company in Langewiesen, Germany,
that still owned 15 original patents. This part of Thermos had been located behind the "
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...
" since 1945 but the
German reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
encouraged foreign investments.
Thermos as a trademark
The word ''thermos'' is a
genericized trademark
A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products ...
used sometimes, since the early 20th century, as a term for any
vacuum-insulated flask
A vacuum flask (also known as a Dewar flask, Dewar bottle or thermos) is an insulating storage vessel that greatly lengthens the time over which its contents remain hotter or cooler than the flask's surroundings. Invented by Sir James Dewa ...
regardless of manufacturer.
[321 F.2d 577: King-Seeley Thermos Co. v. Aladdin Industries, Inc.](_blank)
(2d Cir.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory comprises the states of Connecticut, New