This is not at all strange. It all depends on how you have registered your company name. Most companies start out on a small scale and minimize costs by registering their brand name only in the their own country and only for a single product type (i.e bicycles). Consequently a company in another country could use the same brand name or another company in the same country could use it for an entirely different product.

The bicycle industry, was originally dominated by England and the USA, whose larger companies sold worldwide. However, as smaller countries started to establish their bicycle industries, they set up protectional tariffs.Consequently, national branding was quite common around the turn of the 20th century, . However, as these eased off and opportunites for foreign sales increased, manufacturers started broadening their registration. At the start of the 1970s bicycle boom, continental registration seemed to be most common. For instance, a USA brand might be registered in the USA, Canada and Mexico while a German company might be registered thoughout Europe. However, the bicycle boom blew that wide open, at least for bicycle companies, leading to the global registrations that are commonplace these days.

WSI, the original owner the Centurion brand in the USA, appears to have had little aspiration beyond the USA market, consequently leading to the establishment of a non-related brand in Germany. When Weiner decided to sell WSI, all the bicycles were consolidated under the Diamondback brand, which had previously been used for the BMX and ATB models. What it did was allow global marketing of the bicycles under the established Diamondback brand, particularly the sale of road bicycles in Europe, which would not have been permitted under the Centurion label. Whether this was a pre-sale move by Weiner to facilitate the sale of WSI or a post sale decision by the purchaser, China Bicycle Company, it was clearly a move to take the bicycles global by avoiding brand name conflict.

There are numerous other examples within the bicycle industry. Being Canadian you're probably familiar with the Canadian brand of Miele bicycles, originally owned by Guvin and currently owned by Procycle. However, they was also a German bicycle brand named Miele, and it is apparently the same company that makes appliances. Even though the companies are unrelated, appliance and bicycles can be both be marketed in Canada under the Miele name, apparently because they do not impact each others' sales. That seems to the gist behind the brand registration regulations. It certainly would be interesting to see what would happen if one company developed such a poor reputation that it could be proven to have impacted sales of the other company's product via name association!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their continued contributions and support of this thread. 2.000 posts is quite an achievement and your input has significantly contributed to expanding the public knowledge of the brand(s).