T-Mobile Claims It Owns the Magenta Color

Although today is April Fools' Day, not all the unusual news let loose on the Web in this period are jokes. Engadget, a popular tech-oriented website, member of Weblogs, Inc., yesterday posted an article (click here to view it) in which it's said that T-Mobile, subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and well-known global mobile operator, sent a letter asking the website to stop using the color magenta in the logo of Engadget Mobile (the wireless and mobile sister-site of Engadget).

The main reason evoked by T-Mobile for this is the fact that the carrier's logo also uses magenta, and consumers might get confused and associate T-Mobile with Engadget Mobile, or Engadgtet Mobile with T-Mobile.

Well, since Engadget is not in the same business as T-Mobile, meaning they do not offer mobile devices, data plans and so on (hence they don't compete with T-Mo in anything), the request coming from the carrier is at least bizarre - even if on T-Mobile's website it's stated that magenta is among the "registered and/or unregistered trademarks of Deutsche Telekom AG".

Although a P.S. appeared at the end of Engadget's article, clearly stating that this is "not an early April Fool's joke", we've taken into consideration this possibility too. Either way, the whole thing is really funny - in the good way for Engadget and in the bad way for T-Mobile.

With this magenta issue appeared, I guess a sound advice for all current or future existing websites (mobile related or not) would be to carefully consider the colors of their logos, in such way that no big company can find similarities with their own logos' color(s). In the most probable case the websites can't find a unique nuance - as the color spectrum is, in the end, limited - we suggest inventing new colors. We're not sure about how can this be done, but since T-Mobile's odd request proves that the impossible is possible, this must also be doable.

Back to being (somehow) serious, we hope that, for the sake of common sense, there will be no suing or any kind of legal actions coming from T-Mobile. But if it's to think in the "I sue you" way, T-Mobile should be careful with the use of the word (and the color) magenta, since both come from a small town in North-West Italy, which is named exactly Magenta. The community is called this way since centuries ago, and the magenta color got its name in 1859, after a battle that took place there. What will T-Mobile's owners do if the mayor of Magenta would send the company a letter asking them to drop the using of magenta (word, plus color), as to avoid the town's citizens' confusion? I guess they'll get confused too.