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by mewse 861 days ago
It's.. kinda complicated?

"Craftsman" was never a company. It was a trademark under which Sears sold tools which they hired various tool manufacturers to produce for them.

Black and Decker bought the trademark from Sears in 2017, but don't use the trademark themselves; instead, they licensed the name right back to Sears for 15 years for free (that license will expire in 2032), and Sears (now Sears/Kmart) is still using it the way they used to; getting tool manufacturers to produce tools for them and selling them to consumers under the Craftsman badge.

So it depends on how you want to look at it? Sears never actually made the tools themselves, and don't own the trademark any more, but they're still the ones using the trademark and they're still selling tools made in the same way as they did before. So.. nothing's really changed? Except that the ownership of the name has been transferred to a different company.