Volkswagen Originalteil Sausages | Hacker News Reader

Volkswagen Originalteil Sausages

atlasobscura.com

76 pointssohkamyung22 comments

They do this to protect their brand. If you register for a brand, you must specify for which types of goods or services your brand should be valid. These types are categorized into so called nice classes [1], where each class has a number and covers a group of products. E.g. class 12 is for cars and class 29 is for meat products, including sausages. Your brand registration can include one or multiple nice classes, and different owners can own different nice classes for the same brand.

Volkswagen posesses a multitude of brands. First, one registered in 1956 [2] that's specific to cars, and another one registered in 1998 [3] that includes every single nice class not covered by the first brand registration.

Having a brand registered is not enough. You must actually place a product into the market, otherwise your government granted monopoly on the brand becomes invalid. They just don't want people to make Volkswagen sausages so they have to do their own.

[1]: https://www.wipo.int/classifications/nice/en/

[2]: https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/621252/...

[3]: https://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3980018...

I’m not sure they are selling almost 7 million sausages a year just to protect their brand and their ability to make other food products if they so choose. If it was Porchse novelty turkey jerky I would agree, this seems like a real business and tradition for VW.

I think if an oddball division makes money and doesn't require much oversight by the parent company they just toodle along. Especially if the hassle of selling off the division isn't worth managements time.

Someone please tell Tim Cook this so we can have decent Macs again.

Big Macs?

Good one! :-)

Apple Big Macs vs McDonalds Big Macs should be an interesting contest.

> categorized into so called nice classes

They're called Nice classes, named after the city of Nice (France).

Yeah, Nice is a proper name in this case. I got the capitalization wrong.

Does this mean by selling these sausages they retain the right to all these entries in your third link? For example the last one „Vermietung von Datenverarbeitungsgeräten“. Someone could make a business leasing computers under the name Volkswagen if they wouldn’t make these wursts?

No, to my knowledge, each item sold only covers its Nice class it falls into. They don't just sell sausages, they also sell things from a large class of other things. There is an online shop: https://shops.volkswagen.com/de_DE/web/lifestyle

You can also get the sausages inside VW's too-weird-to-adequately-describe theme park/museum, the Autostadt[1], in Wolfsburg.

[1]: https://www.autostadt.de/start

No emissions cheat device is going to help the other passengers in the car after you eat a few of those...

Also little known: VW sells beer in Argentina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8vwXcB3-Cs

> The finished product is shipped in packs of five to VW dealerships all over the country, who then gift it to customers after a successful sale.

> In 2017, Volkswagen sold nearly 7 million sausages

Wait, so are they sold or gifted?

Also in the article... company cafeteria and grocery stores.

> Wait, so are they sold or gifted?

Sold to the dealers perhaps? Not ruling out imprecise writing, but the dealers are franchise, not subsidiary, so I would expect them to not get their marketing materials for free.

What's the reliability rating on that part? Have there been any recalls? Is it RoHS compliant? Will the US charge me a 25% tariff on import? Can I lubricate with part 199-398-500-B?

I wonder how they manage to detect when sausage is being eaten by a professional food taster/reviewer.

What, to optimize emissions?

And, related, Volkswagen also had its own insignificant but apparently funny for the readers "Ketchupgate":

https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/ketchupgate-vw-...

Good for them. I bet it's fun to work at Volkswagen, any place that makes their own sausage and ketchup must have a great variety of jobs

Does the check engine light come on often with these?

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