Orange sues easyMobile for being orange

By Laura Rohde

Orange SA, France Télécom SA's mobile telephony division, is seeing red over the branding strategy being used by mobile operator easyMobile.com. It launched a trademark infringement suit against the U.K. startup this week to prevent what it sees as misuse of its shade of orange.

Orange began the court action after six months of negotiations failed to persuade easyMobile.com to drop the color from its advertisements and marketing materials, the company's U.K. subsidiary, Orange Personal Communications Services Ltd., announced this week. Orange claims that easyMobile.com is attempting to "pass itself off" as Orange by using a similar color.

EasyMobile.com was launched as a low-price, no-frills MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) service in the U.K. last November by Danish telecom company TDC A/S and T-Mobile UK Ltd. The easyMobile brand is licensed from easyGroup (U.K.) Ltd., which has used the color orange in the branding for all of its divisions since its launch in 1998. It also owns easyJet, easyCar and easyInternetCafe.

EasyMobile.com, which is owned by Telmore U.K. Ltd., said it doubts U.K. consumers are being confused by its branding and that it is ready to do battle with Orange.

In an letter made public this week, Frank Rasmussen, who founded Telmore and is now chief executive officer of easyMobile.com, accused Orange of using the issue as a way to short circuit easyMobile's emergence in the U.K. and other European markets.

"I am not a lawyer, but personally I do not believe this court action has anything to do with the use of the color orange," Rasmussen wrote in the letter. "We are going to launch a very strong concept and Orange is facing dramatic changes in the market. Why Orange is choosing to fight in the court is really not clear to me. We certainly don't want to be confused with Orange. Our war is going to be on the real battlefield: who can offer the British customers the best combination of freedom, low price and high service?"

Representatives from Orange and easyMobile.com declined to comment further on the matter.

Posted February 24, 2005 05:32 PM |