These two Faber pencil advertisements from 1901 appeared next to one another, but A.W. Faber wanted readers to be aware of something:

Later on that year, A.W. Faber would go on to sue Eberhard Faber over the usage of “E. Faber” since they felt it promoted confusion between the brands (to Eberhard Faber’s benefit). The following are excerpts from a 1901 article that describes the complaint:

The highlighted section confirms something I’ve been wondering about for a while: to build up a catalog so quickly Eberhard Faber must have appropriated designs from A.W. Faber. A detailed book about the cooperation and competition between the two companies would be very interesting to read.