Before an automaker could enjoy full protection for the name of their car and its logo, they would submit the information to the Patent Office (and still do). Following a search and approval, the Patent Office would set up by hand a likeness of the logo or name on their small letterpress (later offset) and run a tiny handful of sample imprints.

One of these proof specimens was sent to the car company’s attorney or officer, one to each regional Federal records center and depository library, and the balance, usually just one original, was kept in the master file at the Patent Office. (Then as now, a corporation cannot “own” a trademark: it was applied for by their attorney or representative, who then, in a legal process, would transfer rights to it to the automaker.) As the years passed, the number of patents and trademarks being granted in all fields grew exponentially, and the Patent Office’s files burgeoned. Many of the automotive marques of the Teens, Twenties and Thirties in their files became defunct, no longer with legal currency, and with no one to renew them. So some time after World War II, they and the other depositories commenced the purging of their files, microfilming them, then discarding the originals! (It is said that Patent and Trademark compendia and public documents literally began to consume entire floors of depository libraries. These kinds of documents were among the first to be microfilmed, upon the advent of that then-new technology.)

Around the late 1950s, a C.I.A. officer in the Washington area who was also a keen student of automotive history, heard of this destruction, and was successful in rescuing these items. By the 1960s, his unique collection, valuable both for reference and as historical documents, was sold to Harry Pulfer, the foremost authority on auto emblems, and friend of Bill Harrah. Pulfer used these trademark specimens both as the most accurate and reliable source of dates and styles of auto emblems (in most cases, they record not only the year, but the month and day that an emblem was first affixed to the car), and as precise likenesses upon which to base his reproduction emblems. In some cases, the documents were especially invaluable for their exacting images of emblems and logos for which original badges and nameplates were so rare that none could be found.

Following Pulfer’s passing, the archive was bought and sold several times, at one point their binder holes being reinforced with white paper rings.

Many of the trademark documents reveal interesting detail: the 1953 Dodge logo was “first used Nov. 12, 1914”; the Lagonda, Rolls-Royce, S.S. (forerunner of Jaguar), and other foreign logos were registered in America in preparation for selling here, but it is judged that the number of such cars imported before the war ranged from a few to none. Many of the trademarks are surprinted upon their expiration twenty years later.

Because of the provenance of these documents, the office markings found on some, and their origination from the Washington area, it is believed that these are the actual originals comprising the working files of the Patent Office itself. These are not to be confused with pages torn from mass-printed issues of the Patent Gazette, or with modern photocopies from microfilm still available today from the Patent Office.

In all events, no other such collection of documents has been located anywhere, and each probably represents the most important seminal artifact that can be collected for that make and model. Three-hole reinforced punch in wide blank margin by later collector affecting no text, occasional clerical markings of Patent Office and underlining in Pulfer’s hand, variously; minor edge wear or toning, else generally fine or better, and many pristine. Each now believed unique: today, the Trademark and Patent Office has only microfilm copies -- made long ago, posited from the originals offered here. Some years ago, a single piece from this archive - the original script trademark for the Corvette - was purchased by the Corvette Museum for 1,800.00. • Including some old sheets with multiple different trademarks of a single manufacturer mounted together, their legal boilerplate text trimmed away to save file space, plus old white-on-black photostats, some prewar, and 1950s-60s-style photocopies of others, added to the archive. Also with letter of provenance.

At a time when the American automobile industry has shrunken to a tenuous threesome, it is daunting to look back at these original documents, each giving rise to one of hundreds of different makes and models, almost all now gone. It is possible that by the time these words are printed, the automobile scene will have changed further still. Request 30 page complete list, no charge by e-mail. With packet of about 45 sample photocopies, $25.00 by postal mail.