In a world where everything is patentable or trademark-able, including colors, a federal court in Texas recently ruled that Aio Wireless was infringing on T-Mobile’s magenta color. Aio is a prepaid subsidiary of AT&T, so T-Mobile is claiming this as a big victory over America’s second largest wireless carrier. The judge ruled that customers ultimately identify magenta/plum as T-Mobile’s color, and Aio Wireless will need to change the color of all marketing material, store interiors, and anything else with the plum colorway.
T-Mobile gave a brief statement concerning the ruling, and of course, they’re stoked about the outcome.
The court agreed with us that Aio can’t continue infringing T-Mobile’s magenta mark by using large blocks of what it has called “plum,” and told Aio to stop using magenta or similar colors in all of its marketing and advertising, including stores, web sites and social media.
While we do agree that the Aio Wireless plum color was sort of similar to T-Mobile’s magenta, the similarities seem rather subjective. A few may even argue that the plum is more of a purple, while the magenta is a pink.
What are your thoughts? Was Aio Wireless at fault for using plum as its color?
Via: T-Mobile
This post was last modified on February 10, 2014 11:12 am