When I bought my car radio, it was a Kenwood, and (silly me) I assumed it was made by the British electrical company started by Mr Kenneth Wood (honestly).
In fact, it's a Japanese company, who, though they don't seem to do kitchen products, do overlap some of our UK Kenwood range. I was just told they probably did it deliberately to exploit the other company's reputation and used a small k to avoid the legal problems.

Other examples (anyone else remember this one?) we always used to buy Delsey toilet paper. One day, they suddenly stopped, and then re emerged like a phoenix making luggage. I assume the new company could do this as the old one no longer existed, but I would like to see a Delsey case with a built in toilet roll.

Also, Telma soup is, as far as I know, still widespread, so why would they also make the intercoolers on many of the tourist coaches that visit London fropm Europe?

Explanations and new examples please!

My car stereo system is also a kenwood. I'll just run and check which one of the kenwoods.

From the Kenwood website it seems that the Japanese company was formed in 1946. In Britain it was marketed under the Trio name to avoid confusion with the appliance manufacturer. In 1987 it got permission from Kenwood Appliances to use the Kenwood name in the UK.

May be an urban myth or not but I will relay it.
In order to sell cutlery to the British market, in which a "Made in Sheffield" mark is the most desirable, a town in Japan actually changed their name to Sheffield in order to dupe the public into buying Japanese imports!

I've heard it said that in the 1930s many Japanese goods intended for sale in Britain were cynically stamped "Empire made". When taken to task for this, the Japanese reply was that the things had been made in the Japanese Empire!

Thanks for the Kenwood information, they weren't as naughty as I originally thought, though I can see others were. I remember Trio, they used to make CB equipment, and well thought of as well. Now I see the full picture.

I have just been reminded of another major name double by Tjoebigham (credit where it's due!) on my car initials post, which is MAZDA. Like Kenwood, when we got our first Mazda of 4, I had no reason to believe it was nothing to do with the bulb manufacturers. It is, in fact, Mr Matsuda, which sounds closer to Mazda in Japanese. The bulbs are named after the Zoroastrian God of light, Ahura Mazda, which was very appropriate.

I got another walking through answers today, it turns out two totally unrelated Ekcos. EKCO references
Ours was absorbed into Pye in the 1960s and made radios and TVs, standing for Eric Kirkham Cole.
The other is American, Edward Katzinger Company, and makes kitchen equipment. Apparently neither make crossed the Atlantic so no need to change either's name.

In american trademark law, companies can have the same name provided they register the name under different classes of goods or services and it wouldn't be likely that the two companies were confused for one another. That's assuming most people wouldn't confuse, say, a toilet paper maker and a luggage maker as being the same company. Also, trademark in one country doesn't automatically mean trademark in another, and companies who fail to register their trademarks in other countries are, in my opinion, deserving of any underhanded tricks that get played upon them.

Also, no offense to anyone, but I imagine post-war feelings have something to do with the sentiments regarding Japanese business dealings. Frankly, it is totally appropriate for something from 1930's Japan to be marked as Empire Made, regardless of whether it confused British consumers. The Japanese were fiercly proud of their country, and it was called the Empire of Japan. I suppose it is possible they did this intentionally, but it is also entirely possible that it was as simple as that... they were an empire. It was appropriate.

As far as Sheffield is concerned, I can't find any links to any Japanese-made sheffield cuttlery. There is a rather well-known Sheffield Fine China of Japan. That's the company name, though, and I can't find any mention of a town in Japan that was named Sheffield. Also, of note, perhaps, is the madeinsheffield.org website, which notes in it's history that in the early 1900's a committee was specially formed in Sheffield to defend the name against such misuse by heading the idea off at the pass, and no mention is made of actually having a case of misuse.

Eh, it just strikes me as odd that there are three separate rumors of underhanded dealings on the part of the Japanese which either are likely or proven to be totally aboveboard.

Also, as far as I can tell, Mazda wasn't a company name. General Electric first called a lighbulb by that name in 1909, and it stuck. They owned the trademark on that name, but licensed it to a number of other manufacturers, including Westinghouse. The stopped using the name in 1945. And 15 years later, in 1960, a Mazda was introduced. (Worthy of note here is that the Mazda auto-maker had been in business... in hiroshima japan... since about 1920 under a different name, but understandably took a while to regain their footing after WWII...) Since American trademark law is what it is, I don't think I'd ever have made the connection between the automaker and the lightbulb maker. They could have been operating at the same time under the same name and still have been completely different companies selling completely different things... In fact, if they HAD been operating at the same time, Mazda cars could have had Mazda headlamps (excepting, of course, that Japanese tungsten lamps were the biggest competitor for American Mazda lamps, and I don't even know if they made Mazda headlamps, but you get my meaning...) and the two could still have been unrelated companies.

In these days of multi-national companies you probably don't know where your products are made anyway. I've had several 'Japanese' cars, all of which were manufactured in the UK using mainly UK materials and suppliers, including for instance Dunlop tyres. Many components of these UK manufactured 'Japanese' cars are exported to other assembly plants, including those in Japan, and Nissan currently operates the UK's largest car production plant!
The same principles apply to many other products, and everything from designer trainers and expensive fashion accessories to kitchen appliances may be manufactured in countries with no obvious connection to the one on the label.
Re. the 'Made in Sheffield' or 'Sheffield Steel' cutlery imprint, I've also heard of manufacturers using this when they have imported only the raw material from Sheffield. The actual design, manufacture, packaging, etc could be anywhere.
Companies are right to protect their patents, logos, trademarks, and other intellectual property, but they sometimes don't like us to know where their products are really made!

Not only don't they like us to know, the European Union removed the obligation to display country of origin. Now, if you are bothered, if it doesn't say, they're not proud of it. Elite manufacturers such as Japan or Switzerland will rarely fail to mention it, but many others would rather hide.

Food is the worst. Because they label food origin here from where it died, not lived, they transport live animals in torturous conditions to the UK to legally pretend it's ours. Business still has incredible power to con the public and treat animals badly, but we can only change the world one person's opinion at a time.