T-Mobile Claims Trademark In the Color Magenta

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday Engadget Mobile received a nice letter from Deutsche Telekom / T-Moblie demanding that they stop using the color magenta on engadgetmobile.com. ("Yep, seriously" they say.) Today several sites have gone magenta in a show of solidarity."

they have a point

[seanadams.com]

The title of the page has "t-mobile" in huge letter in magenta, as part of the words "engadget-mobile"

I could totally believe that a non-technical (ok, stupid) person might mistake this for an official t-mobile site.

branding consists of colors, words, typefaces, graphics, and this site mimics a couple of tmobile's elements. It doesn't seem to be a parody or any other such form of protected use.

Are they kidding?

[Whuffo]

Trademark on a color? Next thing you know they'll want trademarks on letters or digits.

Any company that wishes to trademark a logo (or other trade dress) should be required to not use things that are already in common usage. Imagine if the American Heart Association went after everyone else who used the color red in their logo?

There's a limited number of colors, letters, and digits. Choosing one of those and expecting it to be unique is stupid.

It's lawyers adding up hours / protecting the TM

[jokewallpaper]

The letter is a combination of the TMobile trademark lawyers doing what lawyers do...billing hours. Plus, they are protecting the TMoblie trademark. With Trademark law you must prove that you have diligently protect your TM by notifying parties of infringement. In every suspected case. With Endgadget there is no confusion or dilution of the TM. But, if someday TMobile has to defend their TM in court against another mobile provider who might use the color..they can haul out the big box of all the letters they sent to everyone who used Magenta and prove they diligently protected their TM

April Fools, right?

[rossz]

I'm looking at the calendar and thinking, "this has to be a joke!". But then I think about all the bullshit trademark/copyright/patent lawsuits of the past few years. I honestly have no idea if this is real or not.

Re:they have a point

[FiloEleven]

You do realize that they uploaded that logo, the "deceptive" one you're berating, today, which just happens to be April 1? And that they did so specifically to spite [youtube.com] T-Mobile? And that they wrote a blog post [engadget.com] stating exactly their actions and intent?

Congratulations, you've been had.

Re:A throwback to the Roman Empire?

[Mursk]

Not totally sure what your point is. There are plenty of places in the world today where wearing the "wrong" color will get you killed.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Klaus_1250]

It is not according to the European Courts. You can trademark a colour for a specific market (say, telecommunications). The problem is that many telco's now see the Internet as their market and thus assume their trademark applies their as well. Orange has been doing the same for years, threating websites that use orange on their website or in their domainname (yes, I lost my domain / website as well, because it isn't all talk, they really sue and are prepared to fight it to the European Court). So, no orange, no magenta, which colour will be next?

IMHO, granting trademark on colours is another Tragedy of the Commons.

Re:Are they kidding?

[PitaBred]

The point is, I can paint my house Cat Yellow or John Deere Green without worrying about being sued by either company. Hell, I could paint my car that color. As long as I didn't try to pass it off as related to those companies.

And that's the problem... T-Mobile is suing Engadget Mobile for painting their house T-Mobile Magenta.

Re:Way to Stick It To Your Sponsor

[FredFredrickson]

Could this be a publicity stunt for T-Mobile?

Re:UPS Brown

[techno-vampire]

There's a difference here. UPS has trademarked a specific shade of brown, and protects its use. This would be like having the L.A. Dodgers try to trademark blue, instead of just Dodger Blue.

Re:Are they kidding?

[poot_rootbeer]

Engadget don't sell phones, or airtime, and so there is no room for potential consumer confusion.

No, but they regularly enga(d)ge in phone reviews and commentary on the industry in which T-Mobile operates. They are part of the mobile phone business.

If Engadget were to post rumors regarding the specs of an upcoming T-Mobile handset, there could be a real risk of consumer confusion over whether the information is from an official T-Mo source or not.

T-Mobile's request seems perfectly cromulent to me.

Re:It's lawyers adding up hours / protecting the T

[damsa]

Not really, if you stir up the pot then you are likely to lose your trademark status. Going after phone carriers probably ok. Going after bloggers who gives you free advertisement. Probably pretty stupid move both legally and in the business sense.

Re:Are they kidding?

[zbuffered]

Usually when these things get posted to slashdot they seem pretty cut-and-dry, and I can't argue with your specific example, but there are some mitigating factors here:
1) T-Mobile's letter was nice (this shouldn't factor in court or anything, but...)
  a) they stated they were "obligated" to defend their trademark
  b) they specifically kissed engadget's ass
  c) there's no doubt that engadget's current logo infringes (this was done intentionally, as a FUCK YOU to T-Mobile)
2) Engadget Mobile specifically deals in the area (mobile phones ya know) that T-Mobile deals in

What if you painted your tractor repair shop John Deere Green? Or used it in your logo?

I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, but I'm not going to cancel my T-Mobile service that I don't have out of spite or anything. Bloggers can be whiny sons of bitches, just like lawyers.

Re:UPS Brown

[N1ck0]

Even if they do own a trademark on Pullman Brown, Trademark is not copyright. The prosecution of a trademark infringement is supposed to have to show customer confusion or loss/harm involved in the others business.

So if you paint your business car Pullman Brown but don't happen to deliver packages, haul freight, offer business supply services there isn't any reasonable harm to UPS. Now if you opened a store that was called the Unified Parchment Sales, and used a brown and tan logo saying 'UPS Store' on the front, you would probably be guilty of causing customer confusion. Most of the areas where UPS is hopefully in people using brown in similar packaging businesses.

Now of course these days people prefer the threaten, hassle, and hustle methodology of convincing smaller companies to give up defending themselves.

Why is this News?

[ThePeices]

Trademarking a colour is not unheard of, there are plenty of companies who have trademarked a colour. E.g. Cadbury ( the chocolate maker ) has trademarked the colour purple. But note that in this case, you cannot use purple as the main packaging/advertising colour in a chocolate product, it can be used elsewhere without issues. This is just more of the same. The issue will be whether the two companies are 'selling' a similar product.

Re:A throwback to the Roman Empire?

[noidentity]

If you weren't a noble, could you even afford a purple cloak? Today's purple dyes are cheap because they are synthetic.

And purple pixels are even cheaper.

Re:A throwback to the Roman Empire?

[OldFish]

Not if you live in San Francisco.

Re:they have a point

[Anonymous Coward]

Try President's Day (Lincoln or Washington's birthday), or maybe Veterans Day. Or you can think of every day on /. as celebrating smart people with integrity, and April Fool's being our day off :-) Bush actually has a decent sense of humor ... so perhaps one can view April Fool's as celebrating Bush's foolish qualities -- if he didn't have that, then we'd have Cheney as president. Things can always be worse.

Re:Are they kidding?

[amRadioHed]

If Engadget were to post rumors regarding the specs of an upcoming T-Mobile handset, there could be a real risk of consumer confusion over whether the information is from an official T-Mo source or not.

If only our legal system wasn't based on the assumption that people are morons.

It's official, geeks are...

[stubear]

...fucking idiots. The site says nothing about a law suit, they merely received a request from the T-Mobile legal department to stop using the color magenta in association with the Endgadget MOBILE section of their site. First of all, READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE BEFORE COMMENTING. How hard is that? Quit this knee-jerk response to something that didn't actually happen. Second, if you are going to comment, KNOW THE FUCKING TOPIC. Trademarks MUST be protected and T-Mobile has a strong brand in the cellular/mobile space built around the color magenta. Asking Endgadget to stop using the color magenta on their MOBILE section is not unreasonable as it does encroach on their trademark. If Endgadget says no (an their response seems to say this in spades) then T-Mobile will need to bring this before a court to actually decide the matter. Shocking as this may be to hear, it really doesn't matter what a bunch of geeks with no experience in the law, intellectual property, or branding and identity think on the matter either.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Dutch Gun]

I agree... this smacks of a corporate/blogging troll to me. Notice how T-Mobile only asked them to stop using the color magenta in a "trademark-infringing" way. They never claimed that the color magenta was trademarked - it is only trademarked in relation to their logo and corporate identity. In other words, "please don't try to confuse our customers by making it appear our companies are somehow related."

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to me. The summary talked of "demanding", but I have to say, that was perhaps the nicest "demand" I've ever heard.

Re:Are they kidding?

[cfulmer]

But, you could probably not put out a blog called "landscaping gadgets" and use John Deere green. It's likely that somebody will think it's a blog run by John Deere.

Trademark and trade dress are all about customer confusion -- is it reasonable that somebody could go to the engadget mobile site and think it was related to T-mobile? What if the site was reviewing T-mobile services? By my eye, there's a likelihood that somebody will be confused.

A trademark owner has to take affirmative steps to defend the mark against possibly confusing uses by others. If the owner doesn't, then he can lose the mark entirely.

T-Mobile is getting a raw deal on this -- the letter has got to be one of the nicest such letters I have ever seen -- they sound downright apologetic. Heck, they might even be willing to pay for a redesign of the engadget mobile logo. Since they have to send the letter, this is a good way of handling it.

Re:Are they kidding?

[Workaphobia]

No, it simply is not. 1) Colors can easily constitute a major portion of a trademark (IANAL). 2) Companies are obligated to protect their trademarks as closely as is reasonable, lest they lose it to the public domain (if that term is proper for non-copyright-related IP). Given that the two entities share a similar field, and that it is the same word ("mobile") that is colorized, it would be irresponsible of T-mobile to not consider this as a potential threat to their trademark. I'm not saying they would win if it came down to a court case, or even that it would be worth taking any kind of more severe legal action than what they already did, but I see no reason to assume that the request is invalid.

Re:Not just color

[Jesus_666]

I will repeat wht I (and others) have said before:

1.) If T-Mobile doesn't defend their trademarks they might lose them.
2.) The color magenta is SUPER EXTREMELY ÜBER-IMPORTANT to T-Mobile and its sister companies in Germany. It defines their whole corporate design and every German knows them by this color. They can't afford to lose their color trademark.
3.) The Engadget Mobile logo is similar to T-Mobile's corporate design in more ways than the color - the decorative bar between the words is similar to the "Digits" (small squares) that have been a mainstay of the various T-corporations' corporate design for years.
4.) The letter written by T-Mobile was polite, non-threatening and friendly. They merely asked Engadget to please pick a different color.
5.) Engadget showed that success does not equate professionalism and decided to answer in the most pissy way possible. "We don't have to play nice! We're the internet! Woo!"

I agree that corporations usually are soulless beasts hellbent on making our lives miserable in the name of profit, but T-Mobile is hardly being evil here. They perceive a threat to one of their most important trademarks and before they even get out the legal club they nicely ask Engadget to pick a different color. Given that losing that trademark could cost them millions of Euros and years of lost PR work they're being exceptionally nice.

Re:ROFL

[odourpreventer]

It's not copyright, it's trademark. I know it's possible to trademark colours in USA, but you cannot (at least until recently) trademark colours in the EU. You can trademark a pattern in a combination with colour(s), but even then it's not certain.