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posted by janrinok on Friday November 08 2019, @05:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-our-colour dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

A German court has told startup insurer Lemonade to stop using the color magenta in marketing after an objection from T-Mobile

Startup insurance provider Lemonade is trying to make the best of a sour situation after T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom claimed it owns the exclusive rights to the color magenta.

New York-based Lemonade is a 3-year-old company that lives completely online and mostly focuses on homeowners and renter's insurance. The company uses a similar color to magenta — it says it's "pink" —

But Lemonade was told by German courts that it must cease using its color after launching its services in that country, which is also home to T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom. Although the ruling only applies in Germany, Lemonade says it fears the decision will set a precedent and expand to other jurisdictions such as the U.S. or Europe.

"If some brainiac at Deutsche Telekom had invented the color, their possessiveness would make sense," Daniel Schreiber, CEO and co-founder of Lemonade, said in a statement. "Absent that, the company's actions just smack of corporate bully tactics, where legions of lawyers attempt to hog natural resources – in this case a primary color—that rightfully belong to everyone."

[...] Lemonade also filed a motion today with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO, to invalidate Deutsche Telekom's magenta trademark.

Lemonade also issued a color chart ([pictured]) with which it asserts are the hues at issue.

"Here in the U.S., we do recognize trademark rights in colors, but they are not easy to acquire," says Ira E. Silfin, a trademark attorney with Mandelbaum Silfin Economou. "When they are acquired they are fairly narrow.  So, everyone knows UPS is brown, but that's only for shipping and logistics, not sports such as Cleveland Browns or anything else.  If T-Mobile tried to stop an insurance company—or a bakery or a cosmetics company—from using their pink-magenta color in the U.S., they would have a pretty hard time."


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @05:56AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @05:56AM (#917789)

    "Here in the U.S., we do recognize trademark rights in colors, but they are not easy to acquire," says Ira E. Silfin,

    I seem to remember a case where Fluke had a shitload of competitors multimeters destroyed because they were yellow.
    https://hackaday.com/2014/03/19/multimeters-without-a-country-flukes-broad-trademark-bans-yellow-multimeter-imports/ [hackaday.com]

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @07:48AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @07:48AM (#917801)

    Read the rest of what Silfin says: "When they are acquired they are fairly narrow. So, everyone knows UPS is brown, but that's only for shipping and logistics, not sports such as Cleveland Browns or anything else. If T-Mobile tried to stop an insurance company—or a bakery or a cosmetics company—from using their pink-magenta color in the U.S., they would have a pretty hard time." In Fluke's case, their core products are industrial test, measurement, and diagnostic equipment like multimeters, and the yellow colour their products use is a rather distinctive part of their branding. As such, other multimeters using a similar-enough colour scheme could conceivably be confused with their products, which is exactly what trademark law is supposed to prevent. This is completely different from Deutsche Telekom exerting trademark over a colour they use against someone in an unrelated industry. Lemonade isn't even in the telecommunications business, and there's no way that their products and services could be confused with those of Deutsche Telekom even if they used similar colour schemes. What happened there is more like Fluke suing Caterpillar because Caterpillar's bulldozers are coloured a shade of yellow similar to that used by Fluke's multimeters.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 08 2019, @08:49AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday November 08 2019, @08:49AM (#917807) Homepage
      I'd love to see Fluke try to sue Caterpillar, just to see what happens when a Caterpillar employee gets sick of the fiasco, goes rogue, and slowly takes a visit to Fluke HQ. Funny-or-Die need to make a skit like that.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 08 2019, @03:52PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 08 2019, @03:52PM (#917898) Journal

      There is more to companies ripping off Fluke than just the color. I've actually looked at advertisements that used the Fluke name to get your attention. Fluke accessories even more so than the actual meters. As an experiment, you can do a search on Ebay for "fluke multimeter", and count up how many obvious ripoffs compared to genuine Fluke products. Note that if you carefully narrow your search, you can eliminate a large number of ripoffs. The above search term will give you hits for multimeter leads, thermocouples, replacement parts, and more, most of which are fakes.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 08 2019, @08:57AM (4 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday November 08 2019, @08:57AM (#917809) Homepage
    But that's absurd, as Fluke kit wasn't even yellow, it was brownish grey. Then they put the (removable) (orangey) yellow drop-protection cases on them. Then they adopted a colour scheme which implied you had the drop-protection case on, but they still preserved their brownish grey front. I had a cheap-ass chinese multimeter in yellow two decades before I even saw a non-brownish-grey Fluke.

    Absurd trademark. Fuck Fluke.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 08 2019, @03:56PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 08 2019, @03:56PM (#917901) Journal

      That's about how I remember things. First came the dark case, and I still have a first gen 77 in my toolbox to verify it. Then generation 2 came with the yellow shock cushion slipper. Sometime between Gen 2 and Gen 3 Fluke started making their cases for some meters in yellow. The Fluke 77 Gen IV is the hard yellow case, and I suspect everything they sell now is in hard yellow cases.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday November 09 2019, @12:27AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday November 09 2019, @12:27AM (#918111) Homepage
        I've got a 77 mark II with a big chunky slip on/off orangy-yellow (I'm colourblind) ruggedised casing. Browny grey is the meter. Browny grey is Fluke!
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 08 2019, @04:11PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 08 2019, @04:11PM (#917916) Journal

      Errr, ummmm, wait a second. Was there a gray slip on cushion for Gen 2 meters? I recall seeing a darker colored cushion of a meter, at some time. Not sure if it was a Fluke cushion, or maybe it was a third-party thing. Maybe even it was from a different brand of meter. The only thing I'm sure of, is seeing a Gen 1 or Gen 2 Fluke 77 in a cushion that was near the same color as the Fluke. Definitely not yellow.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:14PM (#917917)

      Absurd trademark. Fuck Fluke.

      Really? I think that's uncalled for in this instance. It's one thing to be mad at how aggressively US customs enforces trademarks like this, but "Fuck Fluke?"

      After US customs seized Sparkfun's multimeters, Fluke made things right [sparkfun.com] by offering Sparkfun, free of charge, a shipment of genuine Fluke meters, and suggested they could sell them to recoup the value of the lost shipment or give them away. Sparkfun accepted the offer and subsequently donated them for educational uses. Stay classy, Fluke.