RCA is a trademark owned by Thomson SA^[1] which is used on products made by that company as well as Audiovox, TCL Corporation and Sony Music Entertainment. RCA stood for Radio Corporation of America, a company which later became RCA Corporation which was taken over by General Electric in 1986 and then split up.

Current users

At present, the RCA trademark is used by four companies for products descended from RCA Corporation:

• Sony Music Entertainment, (licensing the RCA name from Thomson) which owns the RCA Victor and RCA Records record labels it received from its former partner, BMG.

• Thomson SA, through RCA Trademark Management S.A, licences the RCA name to other companies to use on products along six different product lines.
  • RCA Telephones - Manufactured by Thomson SA
  • RCA Audio/Video - Manufactured by Audiovox Produces RCA DVD players, video cassette recorders, direct broadcast satellite decoders, camcorders, and audio equipment. (link on Audiovox website)
  • RCA Accessories - Manufactured by Audiovox, Produces Audio and video connectors, remote controls and television antennas.
  • RCA Televisions - Manufactured by TTE Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of TCL Corporation
  • RCA Car Stereo - Also known as RCA Mobile
  • RCA Appliances - Produces RCA Microwaves

Thomson and BMG bought those assets from General Electric, which took over the RCA conglomerate in 1986 and kept RCA's NBC broadcast television interests (GE sold off the NBC Radio Network and the NBC-owned radio stations). Initially, GE continued to control the RCA trademarks (including the rights to the His Master's Voice trademark and the dog Nipper) which were then licensed to Thomson and Bertelsmann. Thomson eventually bought the RCA trademarks in 2003^[2] subject to the perpetual license GE had issued to Sony BMG's predecessor.

In 2002, Thomson and the Chinese company TCL formed a joint venture for the production and distribution of television sets and related consumer products.

In December 2006, Thomson SA agreed to sell its consumer electronics accessory business, including rights to use the RCA name for consumer electronic accessories, to Audiovox^[3]

On October 16, 2007, Thomson SA agreed to sell its consumer electronics audio video business outside Europe including the worldwide rights to the RCA Brand for consumer electronics audio video products^[4]

Bertelsmann AG was new to the RCA family (though the creation of Sony BMG is similar to that of EMI more than 70 years earlier). Sony took full ownership of Sony BMG in 2008 and the record company was renamed Sony Music. Thomson started as the French subsidiary of Thomson-Houston Electric, a company which later evolved into General Electric.

Class-action lawsuit

Many models of RCA television sets produced from the 1980s and 1990s had a design flaw which made some or all of the channels being received through the RF antenna/cable input totally cut out to snow. This was due to a bad solder joint or cracked circuit board as it seemed to be a bad connection, wiggling the cable or the unbalanced dipole would often help. A class-action lawsuit was eventually filed in the 1990s against RCA for this very common problem. As part of the settlement of the action, class members could have their TV repaired, and others received cash damages. The repairs were ultimately unsuccessful in a limited number of models. This problem occurred mostly in the Colortrak models, but was also present in some of the high-end Dimensia models.

References

External links

• RCA website
• TCL Corporation

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