That makes sense but I'm confused about the pickups that people talk about from the 70's - I think they were Gibson PAF Pro or something like that? Why did they include the PAF in the name?
The orignal PAF pickups were the ones issued in 1957-ish, that had Patent Applied For, while Gibson was still waiting for a patent on the humbucker. They're hailed as the holy grail of humbuckers, and so a lot of modern pickups (PAF pro, the SD '59, the Seth Lover Model, and a whole lot more) have been modeled after them.
The PAF Pro part of the Gibson name was probably a promotional attempt, to associate the pickups with a high-quality product.