Deutsche Telekom AG—the parent company of T-Mobile—threatened legal action against Bristol-based smartwatch startup OXY. This is a trademark issue over OXY using the magenta color it uses on as the signature of its brand. The startup was quick to change its logo and mentioned the situation on its blog last week.
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“On November 3rd, 16 days before we expected the trademark to become official, we received a ‘notice of threatened opposition’ concerning our pending trademark,” founder Raffaele Garofalo said in the post. Since the company has a different focus and is tackling smartwatches and didn’t know why they were targeted by T-Mobile, it talked with external advisors.
What was revealed is that the magenta company has a history of going after companies that used similar colors for promotional means going back to 2008—on either using magenta or coming too close in branding.
Since the young company didn’t have the financial muscle to challenge T-Mobile’s parent company, it decided to change the color scheme of its brand and other related materials to yellow and black since they didn’t know if this was a regular thing from Deutsche Telekom AG. The goal is that the company can focus on its crowdfunding campaigns and not on potentially damaging litigation.
