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Comment by zinekeller | Hacker News Reader

> Somehow I doubt the current incarnation of these companies has much at all to do with their origin.

The origin of Pyrex is Corning, the Gorilla Glass maker. They divested Pyrex because they've got tired of dealing with the consumer market and wanted to focus on B2B sales.

The US market was acquired by (as shown) eager to make a quick buck on brand recognition. The European market was acquired by a different company which still manufactures borosilicate cookware to this day (and are not affected by this bankruptcy).

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Aye, and this drives me nuts. For 50+ years, "Pyrex" was the name of a material, borosilicate glass, with known material properties. You could count on it being safe in certain situations.

Then Corning somehow decided that it was the name of a _brand_, and they could use whatever inferior material they wanted, and if you put it in those same situations it would explode and cover your kitchen/lab in glass shards.

How that was even legal, I will never understand.

Pyrex, the term, was originally a brand for borosilicate glass. It has become partially generic over the years, like Aspirin or Kleenex.

Aspirin is still a trademark of Bayer in Canada; if they want to switch to ibuprofen instead of aspirin as the active ingredient, and sell it as Aspirin, they could. Similarly, if Kimberley-Clark decides to start selling sandpaper and call them Kleenex, they could.

If a trademark becomes fully generic it can be ruled so by a court, at which point the trademark protection is lost. Aspirin is like that in the US. But that is pretty rare these days.

Aspirin is different - the US trademark for the name was explicitly expropriated from Bayer by the US government during WW1 and became a generic... that didn't happen to Kleenex or Pyrex.

But if someone sold ibuprofen as "aspirin", doctors would rightfully decry the move as likely to get someone killed. It's a generic but it has a specific meaning.

Selling soda-lime glass as "pyrex" has gotten plenty of people injured, but evidently none severely enough to sue Corning's pants off.

Like to know the name of the European company still making borosilicate glassware.

PYREX, all capitals. pyrex, all lowercase, are soda lime glass and terrible.

It's now also (confusingly) known as PYREX, and here's their website: https://www.pyrex.eu/. I'm not sure if they can deliver to the US (because trademarks and stuff).

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