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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.
That's what the lawyers say, anyway. Thousands of companies manage to do business for decades without egregious trademark actions.
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.
(Lemonade is #ff0083, while T-Mobile is #e20074. Comparison here: https://www.colorcombos.com/combotester.html?color0=e20074&c...)
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. The techcrunch article is a bit more informative -- https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/lemonade-gets-a-nastygram-...
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 consequen…
Does it? Because that seems like nonsense.
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.
> Unfortunately they have to do this if they don’t want to lose the trademark. 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.
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 consequen…
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.
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. The techcrunch article is a bit more informative -- https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/04/lemonade-gets-a-nastygram-...