For some background, the reason these laws exist is to protect consumers from counterfeiters. If someone produces jewelry in a clean baby blue box, customers will start to expect that same level of quality, etc. They will be ripped off if someone else uses the same packaging but a low quality product.<p>However many things have to be considered from the consumers perspective. Is there likely confusion? Is one of the main things courts are supposed to consider.
For those curious, based on the CSS on their respective websites, they aren't _exactly_ the same HEX color, just pretty similar.<p>(Lemonade is #ff0083, while T-Mobile is #e20074. Comparison here: <a href="https://www.colorcombos.com/combotester.html?color0=e20074&color1=ff0083" rel="nofollow">https://www.colorcombos.com/combotester.html?color0=e20074&c...</a>)
This might seem like overreach, but is just a natural consequence of trademark laws.<p>If you can trademark a name as simple as "apple", and if you can trademark an icon as simple as 4 squares of identical size and shape next to another (windows/microsoft), then it becomes quite obvious that colors are treated the same.<p>In the end, trademark laws as a whole will have to be reformed, but this is just a natural consequence of the current laws.
This ownership of color is just ridiculous.<p>By that logic, Google is literally using the Fuchsia color #FF00FF for Fuchsia OS which is literally classed a Magenta as the web color!<p>T-Mobile, I dare you to sue Google.
This is incredibly ridiculous. If a <i>color</i> can be owned by a trademark, what’s to prevent a particular audio frequency being trademarked, or a particular temperature, or a particular luminosity? What if my construction company trademarked “8 meters” — could I go and sue everyone who builds 8-meter-high buildings from then on?<p>Good on Lemonade for fighting it. But something is really wrong with the world when claims like Deutsche Telekom’s are taken seriously in the first place.<p>This is almost like the “illegal number” involved in decss years ago. Here’s the color: #e20074
There needs to be some kind of association for shared defense against bullies. Increase the cost of patent/IP trolling while reducing the risk of defending.<p>NATO for small-businesses and startups.
Modern trademark laws (and IP laws in general) are generally upsetting. It seems like they exist primarily for the benefit of large established players.<p>Nevermind that owning the exclusive rights to use a particular colour in this way is absurd.
They're not even using the same pink! So this isn't just a usual "trademarks just work this way" thing, it's also a question of how much of the colorspace a trademark can own.<p>The techcrunch article is a bit more informative -- <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/lemonade-gets-a-nastygram-from-deutsche-telekom-over-its-use-of-magenta-says-it-will-fight/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/lemonade-gets-a-nastygram-...</a>
Sounds like a fun math excercise:<p>For any trademark of color T(represented as a vector in RGB colorspace), the chance that a brand using color C can be successfully sued is equal to 1-k*||T-C||, where k is lesser than 1 divided by the maximum distance between any two points in RGB colorspace. Find the minimum number of trademarks needed so that for any color the chance of successfully suing is greater than or equal to P.
Particularly ironic based on the history of the Beatles' "Apple Records" (music) suing Apple, Inc (tech) around apple logos.<p>Here it's T-Mobile (tech) suing Lemonade (music) over a color.
This reminds me of a similar case between SparkFun and Fluke from 2014 where Fluke demanded that SparkFun stop selling their own multimeters which had the same colors as the Fluke brand multimeters.<p><a href="https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1428" rel="nofollow">https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1428</a>
This is worrisome, because they claiming a broad swath of the colorspace around magenta. It's hard enough to get the exact right color, without worrying that huge players will assert copyright.<p>FWIW I found this website useful when deciding on complementary colors; you can see how other companies have solved combinations.<p><a href="https://brandpalettes.com/" rel="nofollow">https://brandpalettes.com/</a><p>... and here's what they have for T-mobile (no listing for lemonade)<p><a href="https://brandpalettes.com/t-mobile-color-codes/" rel="nofollow">https://brandpalettes.com/t-mobile-color-codes/</a>
Unfortunately they have to do this if they don’t want to lose the trademark. You can’t trademark something if it’s deemed to be of common use. Of course if your trademark is a color then this can be quite difficult.
What's next? Sue Lemonade for using 'L', 'e', 'm' and 'o' alphabets because they're also used in T-mobile's name?
Protections should only apply to things that add <i>something</i> beyond basic elements. For example, it might make sense to allow a particular <i>pairing</i> of colors to be attributed and protected, since that at least requires more creativity than picking a single color.<p>This is like telling everyone that you now own the letter “D” so no one can ever use that in a word again.
Unrelated to the post, but I'm reminded that the color in question (at least as far as light goes) does not actually exist and is made up by our brains: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9dqJRyk0YM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9dqJRyk0YM</a>
There's a good overview of color trademarks here.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.colormatters.com/color-and-marketing/color-branding-legal-rights" rel="nofollow">https://www.colormatters.com/color-and-marketing/color-brand...</a>
This article led me down a Wikipedia trial until this interesting defense against trademark infringement:<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry</a>
TLDR; Clickbait headline. This is a fairly common practice. T-Mobile has filed and enforces a color mark, a type of trademark, as do many other corporations, for a specific shade of pink known as RAL 4010. Not the entire magenta range.
The “protect people from counterfeiters” argument is a laughable defense<p>This is supply side protectionism at its root<p>Release a proper spec and let people implement<p>These rules enable protection for a middle man who owns a logo but otherwise produces none of the physical equipment or theory behind the functionality itself<p>It’s exactly the sort of nonsense ownership we need less of<p>Make these CEO actually contribute literally not through popularity contests and regulatory capture
It's not unprecedented, by any means. John Deere has won cases against companies using its trademarked green and yellow color scheme. Granted, that was within the same industry.<p><a href="https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/news-and-announcements/news-releases/2017/corporate/2017oct17-deere-wins-trademark-lawsuit/" rel="nofollow">https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/news-and-announcements/...</a>