In a message dated 2/17/05 4:10:55 PM, jeff@VANAGONPARTS.COM writes:

<< Funny thing about some of the aftermarket parts: if you look closely, you
see where the VW symbol has been ground off or covered up somehow.  Basically,
it is a OEM part that has been defaced for non-OEM sales. >>

That certainly is a possibility.  Although, another possibly is that after a
little QC and a dab of statistical analysis the part was declared unfit for VW
consumption.

I'll soon have at my beck and call a top notch intellectual property attorney
who owes me big time.  I'll have to ask her if a lawyer administering a
procurement contract would be serving his client well by allowing a vendor to use
his client's specification in anyway the vendor saw fit, including to undercut
his client's profitable replacement parts business.  If such a contractual
tenet is not the norm, then maybe she can shine sometime by suggesting it.

OE means "original equipment"; these are the same parts the auto maker
stuffed into his car on the assembly line.  OEM means "original equipment
manufacturer", who is the vendor who made the parts that the auto maker stuffed into his
car.  Unfortunately, OEM has become part of the arsenal of doublespeak which
aftermarket merchants use to hawk their goods.  The aftermarket merchant
cannot claim that his wares are OE parts because that would be blatantly
fraudulent, so he calls them OEM parts.  It could be said that he is not really lying
because his parts WERE made by the same vendor who made the OE parts for the car
maker.  But, men have even gone to jail because of the tacit and by calling
these parts "OEM" a merchant is tacitly saying that they are the same as the OE
part, which is nonsense.  As I have said before, vendors maintain OE
operations along with their aftermarket operations and never the twain shall meet.

George