Trademarks For Corrosion Resistant Alloys

Trademarks as a short-cut for specification

We are surrounded by trademarks in everyday life. A trademark is part of a brand and can act as a short-cut for a product's full specification - a Tiffany ring implies a level of quality without stating the detail. In extreme cases a trademark becomes the universal name for a product type: "Hoover" for a vacuum cleaner, or "Googling" a search even though other search engines exist.

Trademarks in nickel alloys

The best-known trademarks in our market are in nickel alloys. Monel, Incoloy and Inconel are registered trademarks of Special Metals Corporation, the original inventors. They created family names and then specific designations: Incoloy is a family of nickel-iron-chromium alloys, and 825 is one of the more widely used, hence Incoloy 825. Other common designations in our markets include Inconel 625, Inconel 718, Inconel 725, Monel 400, Monel K500 and Incoloy 925. Inconel is the Special Metals family of nickel-chromium alloys; Monel is their family of nickel-copper alloys.

Patents, know-how and trademarks

New alloys may be protected by patents, but patents typically last up to 25 years, after which competitors can use the published information to make equivalent products. The know-how needed to manufacture, test and certify demanding products can be as valuable as the patent itself - sometimes more so. This is where a trademark helps distinguish suppliers and, potentially, differing levels of quality, consistency, availability and support.

The Special Metals trademarks are widely used as default names even for alloys not sourced from the original producer. Controlling trademark use has become increasingly difficult in a market where traders and intermediaries freely copy names.

Our experience of trademarked alloys

These issues are familiar to us. We invented super duplex stainless steels - Ferralium^® 255 was the first to be marketed and has more than 50 years of successful use in demanding environments. The original invention was patented, and over time other manufacturers have sought to replicate its properties.

The generic caption UNS S32550 gives the outline compositional limits, but Ferralium^® 255-SD50 has several important differentiators. We specify far lower impurity levels, limiting the inclusions that can start pitting corrosion. We control the composition within the published limits to achieve the optimum austenite-to-ferrite ratio, and the manufacturing conditions are similarly optimised. This know-how makes Ferralium^® 255-SD50 the only super duplex to achieve 85ksi yield strength and to guarantee a maximum weight loss below 0.8g/m2 in the ASTM G48 test at 50degC, where the standard limit is five times higher at 4.0g/m2.

Nitronic 50 is another widely specified trademarked alloy, though its trademark is perhaps not as strong as the nickel alloy names, since the generic XM-19 designation is used just as often. Our Fermonic^® 50 is not simply an alternative trademark: for the smaller diameters, our manufacturing route is unique to us and ensures we achieve the High Strength properties across the widest possible range of bar diameters.

Our portfolio holds many other trademarks. The oldest may be Hidurax, of which Hidurax Special is the original name for Hiduron^® 130. Hidurax was trademarked in 1939, when the family was being developed for naval applications. Refined over time, Hiduron^® 130, Hiduron^® 191 and Hidurel^® 5 still outperform competitors' alternatives.

Like Special Metals and the owners of the Nitronic mark, our own trademarks are subject to misuse. Our technical content and literature is often plagiarised, but we hold such levels of stock, across a wide range of sizes, that we make it easy for customers to access these products directly. Our experienced team, including several metallurgists, also works with specifiers on more complex applications where our trademarked products can best demonstrate their value.