Court sides with T
A federal court has granted T-Mobile a preliminary injunction against AT&T subsidiary Aio Wireless on grounds that the low-cost carrier's color scheme infringes on T-Mobile's iconic magenta. In the decision, Federal District Court judge Lee Rosenthal writes that 'T-Mobile has shown a likelihood that potential customers will be confused into thinking that Aio is affiliated or associated with T-Mobile based on the confused association between Aio's use of its plum color and T-Mobile's similar use of its similar magenta color.'
T-Mobile has staunchly defended its trademark on its magenta color before, and in a statement, the company says that this latest ruling 'validates T-Mobile's position that wireless customers identify T-Mobile with magenta and that T-Mobile's use of magenta is protected by trademark law.'
'T-Mobile's time, effort, and expense exerted to create and define its brand has been unfairly exploited.'
Aio Wireless is a low-cost, no-contract carrier owned and operated by AT&T. The prepaid service launched last year, but T-Mobile filed a lawsuit against the company immediately. In the complaint, T-Mobile alleged that 'AT&T set up Aio to compete directly with T-Mobile,' and the court agrees with that claim, saying that 'the record is clear that Aio wanted to capture T-Mobile customers.'
One point of contention in the case was that Aio doesn't use the exact same color as T-Mobile; the former's is a bit more plum than magenta. It seems the court had little issue with the differences in color, though the preliminary injunction is limited to only one shade of plum. The decision specifically says that the injunction blocks Aio from using 'large blocks or swaths of Pantone 676C and confusingly similar shades in its advertising, marketing, and store design.' The court specifically says that the ruling 'does not require Aio to abandon all uses of plum' - just the particular color Pantone 676C and similar shades.
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