Can someone own a piece of the color spectrum? The intuitive answer is no. We use colors every day — colors are part of everyone’s lives. So why would a company be able to say, “no, you can’t use that color, it’s ours”? Well, that’s T-Mobile’s ploy. Yes, the company has a trademark on the color magenta. This is more widely enforced in Europe, but the company does hold the trademark on magenta in the U.S — though there are a few restrictions on it. Right from their official website: “…and the color magenta are registered and/or unregistered trademarks of Deutsche Telekom AG in the US and/or other countries.” Now, this is limited to specific markets, one of which is clearly telecommunications. In one way, yes, we can see why T-Mobile wouldn’t want another company using their colors, and we can see reasonable enforcement of such a trademark. We mean, if there were magenta dots in a rival logo we might let it slide, but anything resembling T-Mobile’s use of magenta can reasonably be ascribed to them. However, the also own the trademark in the “online sector,” which is far too broad for us to accept. For instance, when my-favorite-book launched back in 2001, they were sued by Deutsche Telekom for use of magenta in one of their fliers. The best quote we’ve heard on this issue comes from a spokesman for my-favorite-book:
“So if Deutsche Post would register its postal yellow as a trademark, nobody could use yellow anymore? The world would get pretty gray if everybody did that.”Preach on, brotha. [Colour Lovers]]]>