Current
Colour Magenta Claimed As Trademark
The German telecom company T-Mobile has successfully registered the colour magenta as a trademark. The company has started threatening to take legal action against other companies using the same colour.
Phone companies are known for their desire to make claims on immaterial things. Some years ago billions were paid for exclusive use of specific bandwidths. The sales delivered windfalls for national states, but brought large telecom providers almost to their knees. Apparently, now another war has started. This time it's about exclusive use of the visual part of the electromagnetic waves spectrum. The spectrum claim disease has apparently jumped from the technicians to the marketeers who are arming themselves to fight another silly battle.
Obviously, trademark registration should never extend to the general and exclusive use of any colour. At times it seems that registration offices have problems with dealing with their workload. The patent office in the US also ran into problems by rewarding unrealistic claims, like giving patents to specific genes, the building blocs of all life.
Anyway, the latest action of T-Mobile has generated a lot of fierce protests, especially from designers. Below the links to the protesters.
Updates
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Ben Bos has updated his work area
28 January 2011 | New Work
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Marion Deuchars has updated her work area
4 September 2010 | New Work
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Ronald Curchod has updated his work area
3 September 2010 | New Work
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Ben Faydherbe has updated his work area
27 August 2010 | New Work
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Bernard Stein has updated his work area
23 August 2010 | New Work