Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337
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."
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday November 09 2019, @12:35PM (1 child)
Heh. Friend of mine was involved in a court case some years ago in which one piece of evidence was deemed "bad" and another, completely identical piece of evidence was deemed "OK". He was tempted to submit both but "forget" to label them, so the court would have to sort out which of the two totally identical items was the "bad" one.
I woulda done it :-).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @06:42AM
Except when you get busted, you can easily lose your license.
But a friend of mine had a similar thing in a deposition. They had a fingerprint expert examine fingerprints and then provide testimony about them. The interesting thing was two were identical fingerprints, just cropped differently with no other changes. No one, including the expert, noticed they were identical. I noticed a few days later when I was helping him review the various bits of evidence and prepare his exhibit book. He was planning to have some fun with that expert until the case was dismissed for unrelated reasons.