The definition of what a reasonable person is, seems somewhat variable. The law holds that a reasonable person is too stupid to see the difference between a T-Mobile logo done up in magenta and an Engadget one but at the same time is smart enough, apparently, to reason that Tesco's "Lincolnshire sausages" are merely made in "typical Lincolnshire fashion" (whatever that means) using pork sourced from the Netherlands, Germany and Poland.
> The law holds that a reasonable person is too stupid to see the difference between a T-Mobile logo done up in magenta and an Engadget one
I think you must take into account that logo colours are often used in other aspects of corporate appearance. The colour may be used as a band across an envelope, a letter, or an ad. Done well, you really only need to see that coloured band to know who's sending it.
That's exactly why this shouldn't be allowed. There is a very small number colours that the eye can readily tell apart, if we allow big corporations to claim these the rest of us will be communicating in black and white.
If it is a complete colorscheme then I have less of a problem with it.
It's funny how this seems to be a phone company thing, in NL KPN (the old telco monopolist) has a claim on light green.
> That's exactly why this shouldn't be allowed. There is a very small number colours that the eye can readily tell apart, if we allow big corporations to claim these the rest of us will be communicating in black and white.
Exactly.
If memory serves, you can't hold copyright on the design of a font in the US for similar reasons. A file containing the instructions describing the shape and properties of a font is subject to copyright, but you can't stop someone else from writing a different file with their own instructions, which happens to reproduce equivalent shapes afterwards. Otherwise, the first big companies to grab rights to a basic serif, basic sans, etc. would soon be charging a licence fee to anyone wanting to communicate in writing.
If similar common sense doesn't apply with colours, then as I will shortly be creating Primary Designs Ltd., a business specialising in web design using the colours red, green and blue, I look forward to a profitable lawsuit against T-Mobile, whose web site does appear to activate all three of my company's colours when viewed on a typical computer display.
Seriously, if you build your entire brand around a colour, then I'm afraid that's your own foolishness. Using a colour in an attempt to pass one business off as another is wrong and shouldn't be allowed any more than any other falsification/trademark infringement, but mere use of a colour (particularly an obvious, popular one such as magenta or orange) should not in itself constitute an attempt at passing off. That's just crazy law, probably bought and paid for by expensive lobbyists.
I don't entirely disagree. But it's an oversimplification to state that the law thinks users are too stupid to see the difference in logos if the colour is the same, as GGP did.
There is actually some good proof supporting the GGGP's point. Shady marketeers will use a completely different logo in the exact same shade of colour to fool people in to thinking they're dealing with the phone company when they send out bills for inclusion in bogus directories.
It works, it's a simple as that.
But that should mean to me that if you don't want any confusion that you should pick a black-and-white scheme and force the customer to read instead of using legal tricks to monopolize part of the spectrum.
