This might seem like overreach, but is just a natural consequence of trademark laws.
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.
In the end, trademark laws as a whole will have to be reformed, but this is just a natural consequence of the current laws.
Well, there is a thing called colormark, But as far as I know, color marks apply to companies from the same industry. T-Mobile and Lemonade are not in the same industry therefore, Lemonade should be able to use Magenta.
IMHO selling insurance as a form of extended warranty on a physical product is not the same thing. I see what you're saying but I just don't see the average consumer confusing the two brands just because T-Mobile happens to sell insurance for their phones. They also sell cell phones but I don't think of them as a cell phone company, they're simply a carrier.
T-Mobile don't just sell "extended warranties" they also sell theft, accidental damage, and similar even on phones (on their network) you didn't buy from them (e.g. €10/month). There's no distinction between what they do and other insurance companies insuring the same product class do.
So as I said, unless you sub-divide the insurance industry on arbitrary lines, they are both selling insurance to the consumer. Claiming that because it is only "extended warranties" (which it isn't anyway) isn't really a legal argument for trademark law. We're talking about markets here, they're both in the insurance market regardless of how you frame it.
Most consumer insurance companies are selling upstream insurance. They buy insurance wholesale, and then resell it making a cut and taking care of the customer facing part.
T-Mobile does the same. So in that way they're no different than any other type of consumer insurance company.
T-Mobile sells insurance on devices they also sell. I have never seen a dedicated insurance company selling insurance specifically on mobile devices. The likelihood of consumer confusion is tiny.
That's like saying that blizzard and oracle are competitors because they are both in the software industry. If you can't substitute the product from one company with another, then they are not competitors.
In this case, if you can't buy phone insurance (the product you would buy from T-Mobile) from Lemonade, they are not competitors.
According to the article, there might be a problem there as T-Mobile does offer several forms of insurance: Things like mobile device insurance and cybersecurity insurance.
And therein lies the obvious conclusion of allowing conglomerations. If one company has their foot in every possible industry, they can yield control far beyond what would normally be considered unreasonable.
I mean we are actually discussing “T-Mobile isn’t a mobile carrier, they’re an insurance company”.
Knowing T-Mobile and the full-of-shiteness that I possesses them, they can argue this about every market. I am.sure they own a canteen somewhere so there goes the food industry, and they probably sponsor some major team so there goes sports equipment and so on and so forth. Greed doesn't stop.
The issue the article points to is both companies provide insurance products: Lemonade for renters and T-Mobile for its own handsets. I’m not convinced the average consumer would be confused by the two, however.
You have a gross misunderstanding of how it works.
You can't trademark the entire word "apple" you can trademark the the word apple within a set of industries. You can't start a computer/isp/copy machine company called apple, but you definitely can start a woodworking shop called apple.
And Telekom trademarked the color magenta for the industries they're active in - such as mobile phone insurance or cybersecurity insurance, which happens to be the same industry Lemonade is active in.
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.
Company A has a trademark. Company B creates its own product (perhaps trademarked as well) which is somewhat similar to Company A's trademark but in a sufficiently different product space that a lawsuit by Company A would seem potentially frivolous. Company B then grows its business over several years, starts moving into adjacent product categories, and ends up with a product that now could get mixed up with Company A's. Company A sues Company B, but Company B argues that it has invested a lot into its own brand, and Company A should have been policing its brand years ago to make sure Company B doesn't end up investing in a brand that Company A would end up considering infringing down the road.
In short, Apple Corps sued Apple Computer three times over obviously frivolous issues, extracted three settlements, and then when Apple actually did get into the business of selling music, sued them again...and lost.
I'm not convinced that their behavior was either justified or effective.
Is there any record of this happening over something as frivolous as a trademarked color?
I hear a lot that bad things could happen if companies don't bully people over trademarks, but I also see lots of companies being good neighbors and doing fine regardless. Are all of these companies both cursed with incompetent lawyers and blessed with uncanny luck?
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.
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.
Yeah I don't understand their reasoning here. If some cell service company started using the colors of verizon/sprint/T-mobile I could see that as confusing and potentially misleading.
But outside of their market, they should have no say on who uses that color.
From the article, there is overlap in their markets.
To add even more color to the kerfuffle, Lemonade filed a motion yesterday with the European intellectual property office to loosen Deutsche’s legal vice-grip on the color, and has petitioned to remove DT’s color-rights on magenta in the insurance sector.
The problem is, T-Mobile actually does offer insurance on services like cybersecurity and tech-gadget protection policies, which could add a touch of gray to the magenta dispute.
Please don't quote with code blocks. It's painful to scroll horizontally, especially for mobile users.
Without code blocks:
> To add even more color to the kerfuffle, Lemonade filed a motion yesterday with the European intellectual property office to loosen Deutsche’s legal vice-grip on the color, and has petitioned to remove DT’s color-rights on magenta in the insurance sector.
> The problem is, T-Mobile actually does offer insurance on services like cybersecurity and tech-gadget protection policies, which could add a touch of gray to the magenta dispute.
...clearly we're not going to agree on this. Yes, I indent code, but—while I've never thought about this before—I actually think using carrots could work equally well! I'd add one carrot per ident level to the start of every line.
Back to quotes, for multiple paragraphs, I just add a ">" to the start of each paragraph.
I can't find the text of the demand, but there's a thing called "trade dress," though I'm not sure if reaches to sometihng this basic and without more design elements.
Do they not? I certainly haven't had any problems with them, but I switched to them from Sprint, so my tolerance for sucktitude is a lot higher than average.
Depends. All cell phone companies have areas where they provide bad service, and areas of good service. T-mobile has historically had the least coverage, which is the greatest way to suck, but that has been changing.
I started with TMo for ethical reasons about 10 years ago, but their SFBay coverage has been really spotty for me in general the whole time. No bars in office buildings, in the suburbs, on underground public transportation where other people appear to have active connections...just lots of inconvenient holes.
I know its at least a year out but I'm personally looking forward to the 600Mhz 5G rollout - theoretically the range will be unbelievable. I don't want gigabit speeds when I'm 50 feet from a tower, I want 10mbps wherever I am!
I've been on T-Mobile for 15 years and have had great service the whole time. There have been a few unexpected perks along the way as well that have helped me out, such as free wifi on flights and free international calls. Just thought I'd voice an opinion of someone who is satisfied with T-Mobile
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.
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.
A comment elsewhere here links to a color comparison. Looking at them, I doubt I could tell you which one is T-Mobile and which is Lemonade with confidence greater than chance.
Oh, I could immediately recognize which one was T-Mobile when I looked at the comparison. T-Mobile has a subdued magenta, whereas Lemonade uses bright hot pink. You can see the stark difference on their websites as well (though when you hover over one of the Lemonade buttons, it looks practically identical to the T-Mobile magenta).
Modern trademark laws (and IP laws in general) are generally upsetting. It seems like they exist primarily for the benefit of large established players.
Nevermind that owning the exclusive rights to use a particular colour in this way is absurd.
Not that it makes it much less silly, but the article mentions:
> The problem is, T-Mobile actually does offer insurance on services like cybersecurity and tech-gadget protection policies, which could add a touch of gray to the magenta dispute.
Slightly tangentially O2 (Telefonica) my mobile provider also sold my car insurance (though underwritten by Ageas), they weren't even a consideration until they popped up with a good deal on a comparison site.
Maybe Lemonade (insurance) should sue Lemonade (buffet restaurant) for word infringement. Then they can sue someone else. Eventually it will loop back to T-Mo.
Well, based on a 2017 version of their site in archive.org, their 'pink' is rgb(214, 0, 109) while T-Mobile's current pink is rgb(226, 0, 116). Not the same, but as a graphic designer, I think they'd be visually indistinguishable for most people unless comparing bordering swatches.
But fuck T-Mobile though. Magenta is a primary color in most types of print. That they can somehow stop other people from using it is bullshit.
Apple got away with stealing the name OS9 from Microware so they were not really a position to sue others over similar names without getting their own court testimony from the earlier trial thrown back at them.
Is this really what companies worry about? An insurance (edit: ha, I thought it was a beverage company until I read another comment) company is using a similar colour as our telecommunications company so let's get lawyers involved?
Not sure where the line is, but this is a case that's far too close IMO because the shades here change depending on screen type more than they are different from one another.
Amusingly I have 2 LCD monitors here, an acer and a samsung, and when I put Tmobile on the Samsung and Lemonade on the Acer, the colors look functionally identical to the naked eye.
The laws are made by the lawmakers (congress, parliaments, etc.)
Justice is there as the supreme/ultimate power to resolve issues between parties. We can't go around smashing heads because "my colour/your colour". When two parties have an issue that cannot be resolved amicably (I don't mean crimes), then Justice gets to say the final word. We live in a civilized world.
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.
This is incredibly ridiculous. If a color 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?
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.
This is almost like the “illegal number” involved in decss years ago. Here’s the color: #e20074
The problem is it's too broad a claim. Trademarking a color is limited to (1) a specific competitive space, and (2) when it is a distinctive identifier of your brand (e.g., DeWalt's yellow and black scheme in the power tools business).
T-Mobile is in the telecom business, and Lemonade is in the residential insurance business. T-Mobile should not be trying to take-down a company that is not in their competitive space for using the same color on their website.
I am not a lawyer, but I have dealt with this at work. This is not legal advice.
Related to tools and colours, SparkFun got in trouble a few years ago over selling knockoff multimeters with the same colour scheme as the iconic Fluke one: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1428
Apparently Fluke "allowed" SparkFun to distribute the multi-meters in question to educational and charitable organizations, rather than just destroying them. I guess that's as close to a nice resolve as you can get without Fluke just completely dropping their action.
Given that they were destined to be sold for $15 a pop, and already assembled ready to go, I very much doubt that this would have been economically workable. Even sourcing a paint that would adhere to the plastic body of the device would be a huge headache.
Could be sold for $17 also, people would understand it, and the other option is to distroy the products and lose the entire investment or to give out the product for free at your coast and maybe close the project for lack of funds.
No opinion about the specifics of this case but brands often do have very strong color associations (think McD) so it is not surprising that they can trade mark colors under certain cases
If any of those were actually distinctively associated with a particular brand, I could see an argument being made for it. I think the key to how reasonable it is to trademark it depends on how widely it's enforced, both in terms of industry and in terms of how much of the color is involved.
In this instance, a magenta banner is associated with a company that offers insurance products - and another company is offering insurance products and using a magenta banner in their branding. I think it's actually a fair question whether that crosses a line.
> Can I Lose My Trademark Rights If I Don’t Sue Infringers?
>
> The short answer is “No,” a trademark owner does not have to sue every single infringer, and the failure to do so in an isolated case of infringement will likely not result in abandonment.
> However, the failure to take action in the face of widespread infringement could significantly impact a mark owner’s rights.
> It is for this reason that many larger companies that invest heavily in their trademark portfolios err on the side of caution in pursuing infringers.
A trademark cannot serve a utilitarian function. People write on white paper, and therefore white cannot be trademarked.
EDIT: If you wanted an "ivory" white to build a brand around... that would be allowed as a trademark of course. But it would consistently be that "ivory white" color that you picked as a trademark, and nothing else.
> That's even better, there are lots of ivory white houses out there to sue.
Only if those houses are in the same industry as your trademark. You can paint your house UPS-brown and they won't be able to sue unless you were using it as a place of business.
Yeah, "McDonald" is trademarked, but trademark is very restrictive over what you can sue over.
----------
So your hypothetical "Ivory" trademark will only apply in the industry that you've registered the trademark under. You can't just sue private houses for using your color.
EDIT: Furthermore, to obtain a "Colormark" trademark, you need to prove that the color has secondary meaning to your particular business. Ex: Fedex-brown is a trademark because Fedex is using that particular brown to color their trucks and employee uniforms, and applies it consistently across their enterprise.
It would be unfair if I were to start my own rival shipping company using a similar color uniform as Fedex. I'd have to use blue-uniforms or green-uniforms instead.
--------
EDIT: As an example: General Mills was unable to trademark "Yellow" as a trademark on Cheerios cereal, because yellow was used on too many cereal boxes already and clearly wasn't a color that people associated with General Mills.
The reason for trademarks is simple: branding. Since there are a near infinite number of colors available (for example: #e21088 should be different enough to not violate trademark), different groups can claim colors of their own (if they wish to trademark a certain color).
Catch-phrases, simple words ("Taste the Rainbow" or "They're more than Good, they're Great"), or even names (Mario) can be trademarked.
Furthermore, Trademarks only apply within the industry. I can use FedEx-brown so long as I don't compete against FedEx.
Protections should only apply to things that add something beyond basic elements. For example, it might make sense to allow a particular pairing of colors to be attributed and protected, since that at least requires more creativity than picking a single color.
This is like telling everyone that you now own the letter “D” so no one can ever use that in a word again.
The basic elements of colour that most people perceive is pretty limited. But within just "pink" there are lots of different shades that have different properties and need careful thought. I think there is something here more than just the basic elements. But it is not always obvious or objectively measurable.
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.
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.
Plenty of yellow multimeters (not Fluke copies) made outside the USA where nobody cares about their childish crayon hoarding. And people wonder why stuff isn't made in USA anymore?
157 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadIf 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.
In the end, trademark laws as a whole will have to be reformed, but this is just a natural consequence of the current laws.
So as I said, unless you sub-divide the insurance industry on arbitrary lines, they are both selling insurance to the consumer. Claiming that because it is only "extended warranties" (which it isn't anyway) isn't really a legal argument for trademark law. We're talking about markets here, they're both in the insurance market regardless of how you frame it.
Does anyone know whether T-Mobile sell THEIR insurance or they act as brokers selling someone else's insurance (e.g. Allianz, AXA, etc.)?
I also wonder the % of revenue of T-Mobile from insurance Vs their other business lines.
(I don't really wonder)
T-Mobile does the same. So in that way they're no different than any other type of consumer insurance company.
In this case, if you can't buy phone insurance (the product you would buy from T-Mobile) from Lemonade, they are not competitors.
I mean we are actually discussing “T-Mobile isn’t a mobile carrier, they’re an insurance company”.
Does it? Because that seems like nonsense.
You can't trademark the entire word "apple" you can trademark the the word apple within a set of industries. You can't start a computer/isp/copy machine company called apple, but you definitely can start a woodworking shop called apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
Imagine if companies could reserve an entire letter. All words beginning with that letter would belong to them.
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/apples-future-wont-be-brou...
By that logic, Google is literally using the Fuchsia color #FF00FF for Fuchsia OS which is literally classed a Magenta as the web color!
T-Mobile, I dare you to sue Google.
edit - sorry, mistake, I meant trademark. I didn't know that wording mistakes were downvoted so harshly.
I am amazed they can even claim a trademark over magenta, is that better?
copyright protects the right of an author not to have their work copied (without their permission)
patents protect inventors from having their inventions used (without their permission)
That's what the lawyers say, anyway. Thousands of companies manage to do business for decades without egregious trademark actions.
Company A has a trademark. Company B creates its own product (perhaps trademarked as well) which is somewhat similar to Company A's trademark but in a sufficiently different product space that a lawsuit by Company A would seem potentially frivolous. Company B then grows its business over several years, starts moving into adjacent product categories, and ends up with a product that now could get mixed up with Company A's. Company A sues Company B, but Company B argues that it has invested a lot into its own brand, and Company A should have been policing its brand years ago to make sure Company B doesn't end up investing in a brand that Company A would end up considering infringing down the road.
I'm not convinced that their behavior was either justified or effective.
I hear a lot that bad things could happen if companies don't bully people over trademarks, but I also see lots of companies being good neighbors and doing fine regardless. Are all of these companies both cursed with incompetent lawyers and blessed with uncanny luck?
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.
But outside of their market, they should have no say on who uses that color.
Without code blocks:
> To add even more color to the kerfuffle, Lemonade filed a motion yesterday with the European intellectual property office to loosen Deutsche’s legal vice-grip on the color, and has petitioned to remove DT’s color-rights on magenta in the insurance sector.
> The problem is, T-Mobile actually does offer insurance on services like cybersecurity and tech-gadget protection policies, which could add a touch of gray to the magenta dispute.
Do you indent your code? Or are the curly braces enough?
Back to quotes, for multiple paragraphs, I just add a ">" to the start of each paragraph.
I just use a carrot and make it italics, easy to see.
Though it should be:
> "It doesn’t indent"
• https://getitwriteonline.com/articles/titles-italics-or-quot...
• https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/14876/use-quotat...
I'm pretty sure this is the reason people try to use code blocks for quotes—because they want it indented.
That’s not what happens on mobile.
Depends on how you, um, use the carrot. I'd recommend eating it, but there are many other ways it could bring joy.
In the context of quoting, using a caret (this symbol: ^) is not common, with the exception of saying THIS^.
The ">" symbol is officially known as the "greater-than sign"[1]. That's the one you probably meant.
</typography nerd mode>
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater-than_sign
Way to go Siemens
NATO for small-businesses and startups.
The techcrunch article is a bit more informative -- https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/lemonade-gets-a-nastygram-...
In this case, I don't think a typical consumer would see brand confusion, which is really the benchmark for trademark enforcement usually.
Nevermind that owning the exclusive rights to use a particular colour in this way is absurd.
> The problem is, T-Mobile actually does offer insurance on services like cybersecurity and tech-gadget protection policies, which could add a touch of gray to the magenta dispute.
(Lemonade is #ff0083, while T-Mobile is #e20074. Comparison here: https://www.colorcombos.com/combotester.html?color0=e20074&c...)
I think that in Lemonade german site, they changed the color to a darker pink (probably until the issue with T-mobile is finished)
But fuck T-Mobile though. Magenta is a primary color in most types of print. That they can somehow stop other people from using it is bullshit.
Lots of companies trademark their brand colors. UPS has a particular shade of brown.
There are others, including 3M, Barbie pink, the yellow of a Wiffle Ball bat, and Cadbury purple.
Where's the line then?
Amusingly I have 2 LCD monitors here, an acer and a samsung, and when I put Tmobile on the Samsung and Lemonade on the Acer, the colors look functionally identical to the naked eye.
The laws are made by the lawmakers (congress, parliaments, etc.)
Justice is there as the supreme/ultimate power to resolve issues between parties. We can't go around smashing heads because "my colour/your colour". When two parties have an issue that cannot be resolved amicably (I don't mean crimes), then Justice gets to say the final word. We live in a civilized world.
https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/news-and-announcements/...
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.
This is almost like the “illegal number” involved in decss years ago. Here’s the color: #e20074
I'm not saying I agree that colors should be trademarked, just that it's fairly common practice.
Is it only goodwill that is keeping Crayola from suing everyone? No one ought to have the right to prevent others from using a color of all things.
It’s like kindergarten all over again... “That’s my crayon! You give it back!”
T-Mobile is in the telecom business, and Lemonade is in the residential insurance business. T-Mobile should not be trying to take-down a company that is not in their competitive space for using the same color on their website.
I am not a lawyer, but I have dealt with this at work. This is not legal advice.
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1430
Apparently Fluke "allowed" SparkFun to distribute the multi-meters in question to educational and charitable organizations, rather than just destroying them. I guess that's as close to a nice resolve as you can get without Fluke just completely dropping their action.
I wonder if they would consider the idea of painting them in a different colour...
In this instance, a magenta banner is associated with a company that offers insurance products - and another company is offering insurance products and using a magenta banner in their branding. I think it's actually a fair question whether that crosses a line.
With Trademark law, companies have to protect their trademarks, or risk losing their trademark.
Pretty standard in the US.
To me, T-mobile's mark is the color and the logo. But pink alone does not scream "T-mobile" to me.
>
> The short answer is “No,” a trademark owner does not have to sue every single infringer, and the failure to do so in an isolated case of infringement will likely not result in abandonment.
https://www.dbllawyers.com/can-lose-trademark-rights-dont-su...
> However, the failure to take action in the face of widespread infringement could significantly impact a mark owner’s rights.
> It is for this reason that many larger companies that invest heavily in their trademark portfolios err on the side of caution in pursuing infringers.
This reads like a risk to me.
EDIT: If you wanted an "ivory" white to build a brand around... that would be allowed as a trademark of course. But it would consistently be that "ivory white" color that you picked as a trademark, and nothing else.
The "damages" would be the resale value of those houses combined.
Only if those houses are in the same industry as your trademark. You can paint your house UPS-brown and they won't be able to sue unless you were using it as a place of business.
Case in point: Lake McDonald Lodge (https://www.yelp.com/biz/lake-mcdonald-lodge-west-glacier) can exist because its in a totally different business than McDonald's fast food.
Yeah, "McDonald" is trademarked, but trademark is very restrictive over what you can sue over.
----------
So your hypothetical "Ivory" trademark will only apply in the industry that you've registered the trademark under. You can't just sue private houses for using your color.
EDIT: Furthermore, to obtain a "Colormark" trademark, you need to prove that the color has secondary meaning to your particular business. Ex: Fedex-brown is a trademark because Fedex is using that particular brown to color their trucks and employee uniforms, and applies it consistently across their enterprise.
It would be unfair if I were to start my own rival shipping company using a similar color uniform as Fedex. I'd have to use blue-uniforms or green-uniforms instead.
--------
EDIT: As an example: General Mills was unable to trademark "Yellow" as a trademark on Cheerios cereal, because yellow was used on too many cereal boxes already and clearly wasn't a color that people associated with General Mills.
The reason for trademarks is simple: branding. Since there are a near infinite number of colors available (for example: #e21088 should be different enough to not violate trademark), different groups can claim colors of their own (if they wish to trademark a certain color).
Catch-phrases, simple words ("Taste the Rainbow" or "They're more than Good, they're Great"), or even names (Mario) can be trademarked.
Furthermore, Trademarks only apply within the industry. I can use FedEx-brown so long as I don't compete against FedEx.
This is like telling everyone that you now own the letter “D” so no one can ever use that in a word again.
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.
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1428
It's not, there's tons of fine print and multiple limits.