Polydor is a record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 owned by Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...

, headquartered in the United Kingdom.
Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft

Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...

. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone Company

Gramophone Company

The Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organization for the famous "His Master's Voice" label...

 having severed their ties during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Deutsche Grammophon claimed the rights to the His Master's Voice trademark for Germany, where HMV

HMV

His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...

 recordings were released under the Electrola

Electrola

Electrola was a record label founded in Berlin in 1925 by the Gramophone Company. In March 1931 Electrola, along with its parent label and Carl Lindström Company parent Columbia Graphophone Company, merged to form the Electric & Musical Industries Ltd. . The German EMI unit was first called...

 trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

.