03.31Oh, is that ENGADGET Mobile? I thought it was T-Mobile
This story right here is what I like to call “blogging gold.” Only a week or so after I became aware that Deutsche Telekom had not only trademarked the color magenta, but was also actively bigfooting companies that had the temerity to put magenta in their logos, DT has gone after Engadget Mobile. (Thanks to all of you who sent this link to me.)
In a cease-and-desist letter that Engadget swears is not an April Fool’s joke, DT enumerates the myriad ways in which the use of magenta in Engadget Mobile’s Web pages could cause confusion with the use of magenta in the T-Mobile logo. Their rationale is that Engadget Mobile covers T-Mobile’s products and services, so a person could easily be confused by the color of the logo at the top of the page into thinking that Engadget Mobile is, in fact, the manufacturer of the Sidekick 2. Ok, on the one hand? Awesome. As a wise man once said, “they should sell tickets to that dance.” On the other hand, didn’t I tell you things were getting out of hand, here?
In today’s note, Engadget links to a previous post in which copyright attorney Nilay Patel attempted to defuse some fears about a company trademarking a piddly little thing like a color. Pooh-pooh, he said, or, more specifically:
“If T-Mobile is of the opinion that it’s done such a good job associating itself with magenta that any other use of magenta would confuse consumers, it can certainly try to sue its way to glory, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here — it’s just covering its ass, because that’s what gigantic companies do in small-print disclaimers.”
See, but that’s what the Culture of Ownership blog is here to point out. Somehow, we’ve gone way beyond the small-print disclaimers and all the way into the “sue your way to glory” days. (Get it? Glory days?) For one thing, even though Patel pointed out back in ’07 that trademarks are hard to get, the global economy is such that a company can file for a trademark in an intellectual-property haven like the Netherlands and launch cheap and easy lawsuits like so many Scuds. Many of the targets will collapse under the barrage (will Time Warner/AOL really muster the resources to fend off a giant like Deutsche Telekom, or is a sudden shift to a nice navy, perhaps a lovely scarlet, in Engadget Mobile’s future?), and as more and more of them fall, the end result is exactly the one that Patel so lustily dismissed as so much “over-excited” balderdash. T-Mobile will, for all intents and purposes, own magenta. And that’s just no damn good.
Just as an aside, if you’re the lawyer who has to write the phrase, “we have recently learned that your company is using the color magenta in the logo of the Engadget Mobile news blog,” do you ever start to wonder … what are you doing with your life? Or are you just swimming in magenta-colored bank notes and it no longer starts to matter?
8 Responses to “Oh, is that ENGADGET Mobile? I thought it was T-Mobile”
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I intend to trademark the use of color. If you’re reading this you might want to go black and white if you want to avoid litigation. Although those two might fall under my trademark as well so you should probably just stop publishing altogether.
Hooray Netherlands!
March 31st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
The 500 Euro notes are only a couple of shades darker than T-Mobile’s magenta. Perhaps those lawyers *are* swimming in it?
I’m now waiting for the Crayola people to rename their magenta to “T-Mobile Magenta”[1] or some such nonsense. Or maybe we should just lock T-Mobile’s lawyers in a cage with some legal eagles from Pantone.[2] I’d pay to see that.
[1] Crayola’s magenta is much more blue than T-Mobile’s, anyway.
[2] Many shysters go in; none come out.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:00 pm
I personally think it’s ridiculous that ANY color can be specifically trademarked. It’s even more crazy that it’s MAGENTA! Does that mean that if a company prints a flier and the printer gets the offsets wrong and some magenta is shown that Deutsche Telekom can sue them? That’s just retarded.
Colors, even magenta, in relation to their trademarked logo is ok. I think it would be fair for T-Mobile to be unhappy if Sprint started using magenta or if FedEx started using the same brown as UPS. However, to attack a company who has tenuous connection to your industry is silly and should be fought. I don’t see Engadget backing down, and no one in that situation should.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:44 am
[...] rage that builds every time I think about this. I will, however, direct your attention to a post on The Culture of Ownership, a blog which essentially sprang to life as a way for Molly Wood to elaborate on her frequent Buzz [...]
April 1st, 2008 at 10:36 am
[...] has responded by adding a bunch more magenta to their main site. Kudos, EnGadget. Also, see Culture of Ownership for some insight on [...]
April 1st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Yesterday, I was looking at google news and saw a picture that was bright yellow and bright blue. I started to click on it thinking it was an article about IKEA. Then I noticed it was a shot of police tape taken against a blue sky at a crime scene. Should IKEA sue the police for using their shade of yellow? And who are they going to sue for using their blue to paint the sky???
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:10 pm
So aside from the utter ridiculousness of DT’s assertions, I have a fundamental problem with their hijacking of such a common color as magenta. Even if we accept the argument that DT is the only company with a right to use the color in T-Mobile’s logo (which we most emphatically do not, but just for the sake of argument), I don’t see how they have a legal leg to stand on when they lay claim to broad swaths of the red-blue color palette. T-Mobile’s magenta is not the same color as Engaget’s magenta. A different mix of inks is used for their respective print materials, and different RGB or hex codes determine how they will display on screen. Next thing you know they’ll be trying to prevent the use of magenta as a component in CMYK (M stands for magenta) four-color process printing.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
On behalf of all Dutch, I apologize.
BTW, dang-it Wood!
I’m taking you to court for making me infringe copyright, by planting the Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days” in my head. I was humming it(!), clearly a breach of copyright. And it’s all YOUR fault!
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 am