PINK IS MY DOMAIN!

'All Things Considered' / NPR, conversation:

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Hey, Ailsa, I want to try a thought exercise with you, OK?

AILSA CHANG, HOST: OK.

SHAPIRO: When I say the word magenta, what's the first thing that pops into your head?

CHANG: A Crayola crayon.

SHAPIRO: OK. Well, the wireless carrier T-Mobile is claiming in a new lawsuit that the color magenta is so inextricably linked to its brand that other companies—

CHANG: What?!

Little hint. Shock is the right answer. Yes. Good.

Except T-Mobile really was filing a lawsuit for ownership of magenta. That actually went down, my artsy friends, my crafty crew. T-Mobile went after smaller companies using magenta and kicked them to the curb. They noted that colors could be trademarked if they 'acquired a secondary meaning' (whatever that is). Otherwise, they went entirely batsht for that hot, hot pink*.

Deutsche Telekom, the parent of T-Mobile (if you didn't already know), then claimed ownership of a color that is in just about every printer on earth—magenta. Pantone Rhodamine Red U. You know, that thing that looks like Opera paint that artists like Lioba Brückner and Maria Abagnale make sit up and take notice.

The Art and Business of Color

In fact, right about now you might be shrugging this off. Or you might be reflecting on what a diabolical corporate overreach it is to trademark a color. You do you. As an artist and a collector, believe me, I understand the dichotomy here. But as stunning as this may sound, they won. Sort of. T-Mobile's specific shade of magenta is Pantone 219 C.

Which looks like this:

BEHOLD Pantone 219 C! In the immortal words of MC Hammer, my creative cabal, 'U can't touch this'.

So owning a color is a thing, and T-Mobile isn't alone. There are arguably even more famous companies hoarding colors as we speak, and you already know who they are.

It may not even be important that big businesses own colors. After all, Pantone 219 C isn't exactly the same as Pantone 185 C or 'Process Magenta,' that color that is part of the Pantone Matching System (the other PMS) and used in the printing industry. There are 34 whole other... magentas between 185 and T-Mobile. Okay, that's not how those numbers work, but you get my drift. There are other hues of magenta.

Why Does This Matter?

The question to ask yourself is, "Does it matter?" And if so, why?

As you know, coming out the gate, T-Mobile went for Lemonade, a newly fledged insurance company. Trademarks are bound by industry—a category of goods and services—but Deutsche Telekom, or D-Telekom hereafter, decided that insurance was too close to their industry of cellular phones. They realized that the use of magenta had to be controlled, so they girded their hegemonic power and dropped some trademark law on Lemonade.

Enter Lemonade being modest (who has more followers than this girl)! Its use of pink was FORBIDDEN!

But this is also not an issue for most readers. Or... not important enough.

Well, what if I told you that at the height of D-Telekom's pinktatorship, the largest telecommunications provider in Europe, the fifth largest globally, with $112 billion in revenue in 2023, sent its fleets of lawyers not just after Lemonade (and its 1258 employees), but:

• A tech blog in the USA

• An invoice processing company in Holland

• A 9-person IT shop in the UK

• A watchmaker on Indiegogo (not yet a business, but trying!)

  
  

And they were serious. Real serious.

About owning a primary color. So serious that a human in any industry using said color was automatically on their shh-ugar list. It took a social media campaign to raise this issue to the point where D-Telekom was even embarrassed. Still, even though the industries involved in this debacle were sometimes vastly different, the trademark was upheld.

The Impact on Creativity

Magenta is a primary color, a fundamental color that can't be mixed by combining other colors. It is a building block for all the colors you see in color printing. Besides that, it is basic and critical to artistic liberty that humans be allowed to use a color without a billion-dollar business run by very wealthy people sending fleets of lawyers to sing them to the poorhouse.

In the case of D-Telekom, the imbalance of their tremendous power and resources allows them, the vastly more powerful entity, to assert control and influence over those with fewer resources—humanity. Artists. Those affected by this may feel like they are being targeted arbitrarily or disproportionately... because they can be, and often, they are.

When it comes to color, those with money and power can weaponize laws that are essentially dormant. Laws that may seem, on first glance, toothless. Have an open mind, because they are capable of twisting what that regulation means to harm individuals and groups of people, like artists.

The story of T-Mobile reminds us we've seen this before. It is the role of an artist to think freely, and resist in the best way they can—with their art!

So, raise your pens, brushes, and ad nauseam, my creative crowd, and pass the pink!

Learn More About Trademark Laws