Every now and then, one sees weird, bizarre, true stories filtering through news feeds, and the internet, that make you go, “Ermmmmmmmm, riiiiiiiiiiiiight…..” Things like the judge who sued his dry cleaners for $65 MILLION, or the guy who tried to rob a bank using a gun-shaped ham sandwich (honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up!)
But this week, we’ve had one of these stories come through from the mobile world. And we did indeed go, “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…”
Basically, eagle-eyed users at colourlovers.com have found this on T Mobile USA’s website:
Ooooooooooooooooo-kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk… they’ve copyrighted the colour magneta…
*shakes head in disbelief*
The interesting thing, though, is that we checked T Mobile UK’s website, or more specifically, their copyright section, and there is NO mention of the above copyright warning. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not copyrighted (since the trademark’s owned by T Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom), but I suspect rather strongly it might be because the UK is not as lawsuit-mad as America, and because we know it’s daft arguing over a colour.
A logo, yes. A colour? Nah, I don’t think so. Otherwise, what’s next? Orange copyrighting, erm, orange, and bankrupting the Californian orange growers. Vodafone copyrighting red, and suing Santa??
But, for anyone reading this in America, there is hope for you to safely use magenta again. Just use the next pantone colour along, as in the handy demonstration to the right, there, because as we all know, ONE SHADE of magenta along makes all the difference, and will make it totally obvious you’ve not nicked their logo.
–Â
(Technical Markus would like to apologise for the extreme annoyance at America, and realises he will probably never be able to go there on holiday again, after this…)
November 7th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
A quick search of the The British Patent Office (www.patent.gov.uk) and their database of trademarks shows Orange hold the colour orange (pantone 151) as a registered trademark too. How strange!!!
November 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
This blog post is ridiculous. Here in the UK Royal Mail have trademarked the color red. Does that mean no-one can sell red pens? No! These trademarks are supposed to be *sensibly* interpreted. i.e. Using Magenta as your companies color is fine, but starting a mobile network and making everything magenta would land you in a bit of trouble, especially if you called it X-Mobile or something
Likewise using red is probably OK for everything except a comapny with mail in the title, since anyone who sees a mail delivery company which paints all it’s vans red will automatically think it is Royal Mail.
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
chuck norris does not believe in germany
therefore no patent from a german company is real