Magenta Makes DT See Red

Baldwin Louie — Fri, 27 Jul 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Online shops beware. When planning your corporate logo, avoid the color magenta, or else Deutsche Telekom may be after you. At least this is what happened to my-favorite-book.com, a book-on-demand-publisher launched in Germany this May.

DT, whose corporate logo relies heavily on magenta, sent the retailer a cease-and-desist letter claiming that use of the color infringed on its trademark and raised the risk of customers mistaking my-favorite-book for Deutsche Telekom.

My-favorite-book offers would-be authors a chance to self-publish their books. For an up-front fee of $5,000, they can send in those poems, memoirs or PhD theses they always wanted to see in print. My-favorite-book produces, markets and sells the works, which are printed individually as orders come in; the author gets 100 copies himself and a share of the money made from any book sales.

To promote their service, my-favorite-book launched an advertising campaign in May. Its advertisements in German magazines and newspapers came in different colors - green, blue, orange, grey, yellow and magenta. It was the last one that didn't go down well with Deutsche Telekom, nicknamed "the pink giant" because of its use of the color in Germany.

"We have registered the color of magenta as a trademark in the telecom and online services sector," Telekom spokesman Peter Kespohl says. "We have to go after infringers to protect this trademark."

Utz Karpenstein, spokesman for my-favorite-book, thinks this is odd. "So if Deutsche Post would register its postal yellow as a trademark, nobody could use yellow anymore? The world would get pretty gray if everybody did that."

In a sense this is exactly the situation, according to Michael Terhaag, a lawyer at the German law firm Strömer Rechtsanwälte (which is not involved in the case). "Nobody competing with Deutsche Post in the delivery business will be able to use yellow as a corporate design color." Indeed, the Telekom spokesman points out that Telekom sells books through its online service T-Online and is therefore competing with my-favorite-book.

Terhaag still thinks that Telekom doesn't have a case. "[my-favorite-book] isn't really in the telecom sector just because they sell online", he says. "Also, if they use magenta in only one ad, and other colors in other [ads], this makes a big difference to the infringement claim. It also matters if they don't use exactly the same color." Telekom has registered the color code RAL 4010, while the magenta in my-favorite-book's ads comes from the printing color scheme CMYK.

However, Telekom's move doesn't surprise Terhaag. "They shoot against anything that moves and is only remotely similar to their brand so that others keep their fingers off it. We advise our telecom clients to stay away as far as possible from their trademarks."

Meanwhile, my-favorite-book appears to be ready to let Telekom scream until they get magenta in the face. Karpenstein says they haven't reacted to Telekom's letter and have no intention of doing so. Telekom will now look into taking them to court, Kespohl says.

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Magenta Makes DT See Red