Trolling The Trademark Troll: Lemonade CEO Releases Chrome Extension To Remove Magenta From Websites

from the pink-out dept

You will recall that last month we discussed the latest iteration of T-Mobile's ongoing war to defend its trademark on the color magenta, as well as close variants of that color. While there are instances in which a particularly unique color or shade of color can be trademarked by a company, this case involved T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, bullying insurance company Lemonade out of using the color magenta in its branding. Given that the insurance and mobile phone industries are quite disparate, this never should have been a dispute, regardless of how ridiculous it is for a company to have exclusive rights to a color like magenta.

The folks at Lemonade appear to agree. While the company complied with Telekom's C&D, it also launched a PR blitz to highlight how insane this all is. First, Lemonade launched its #FreeThePink campaign to raised public awareness, and is taking its case to EUIPO to try and invalidate the trademark. But that wasn't all. The staff of Lemonade has now released a Chrome browser extension that, ahem, helps enact T-Mobile's vision of being the only purveyor of pink out there.

Pending the decision of European IP authorities, a Lemonade employee, Itamar Kestenbaum, wrote a Chrome extension called Pink-Out.

In fact, it's fair to say that Kestenbaum primarily wanted to showcase Deutsche Telekom's appalling behavior.

What the extension – essentially designed to troll the troll – does is strip all webpages, except those belonging to the German company itself, of “questionable shades.”

The app itself claims it helps those browsing the internet to be "pink-compliant", chiefly as a way to highlight the absurdity of all of this. In addition, the extension's page says that with a click of a button all pink is removed from the depiction of public websites, except those owned by T-Mobile. The page concludes with:

This extension is free -- like the color pink should be.

I'll give the company this: they're certainly making Lemonade out of the magenta-hued lemons T-Mobile has handed them.

Filed Under: chrome extension, magenta, troll. trademark
Companies: lemonade, t-mobile

Knowing What Happens Next, T-Mobile CEO Legere Heads For The Exit

from the getting-out-while-the-getting's-good dept

We've long noted that T-Mobile's brand reputation as a feisty consumer-friendly disruptor is only really skin deep. While the T-Mobile of 2012 or so certainly added some much needed competition to the wireless sector (killing ETFs, eliminating long-term contracts, and eroding international roaming costs), more recently the company has started to look a lot like the bigger competitors (AT&T, Verizon) it pretends to be superior to. From mocking groups like the EFF to opposing net neutrality, the company isn't all that different from the companies its brash CEO John Legere likes to make fun of.

The disconnect between the T-Mobile consumer friendly "uncarrier" brand and reality has proven particularly notable as T-Mobile and Sprint have kissed up to the Trump administration to gain regulatory approval for their controversial $26 billion megamerger.

From hiring Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski days after he mocked a kid with Down Syndrome on TV, to trampling the Constitution's emoluments clause by ramping up patronage of Trump's DC hotel to get merger approval, it hasn't been a pretty sight. Not a week goes by where Legere, who spent years mocking other companies' "bullshit," can't be found making false promises related to the megadeal.

While the deal has unsurprisingly received the DOJ (now run by former Verizon lawyer Bill Barr) and FCC (now run by former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai) blessing thanks to T-Mobile's relentless ass kissing, it still faces a looming lawsuit by a bipartisan coalition of 13 state AGs. Which makes it an interesting time for T-Mobile CEO John Legere to announce he'll be leaving the company starting next May to be replaced by current T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert. Legere likely realizes it's best to go out on top. He also likely realizes that he probably shouldn't stick around to watch his company slowly become everything he claims to despise:

"Modern T-Mobile was born from the remnants of the DOJ’s decision to block AT&T from buying T-Mobile in 2011. The blocking of the deal forced AT&T to pay a $4 billion break up fee, money then used to propel T-Mobile to success.

Ironically, a company born out of government opposition to wireless consolidation is now pushing for one of the most controversial megadeals in industry history. The shift, driven largely by T-Mobile majority owner Deutsche Telekom, forced Legere into a role that’s in stark contrast to the brash, consumer-friendly persona he’d built since 2012."

If you've listened to economists, consumer groups, or 40 years of telecom history, it's clear that eliminating just one of four wireless competitors is going to hurt competition, raise rates, and result in endless layoffs as duplicative positions are inevitably eliminated. Since Legere has been busy promising the exact opposite of that, it's probably a good time to get while the getting's good, before his entire branding persona--replete with cookbooks and magenta high tops--is exposed as superficial by the company's inevitable thirst to take advantage of less competition than ever.

Filed Under: john legere
Companies: t-mobile

The Color Magenta, Or How T-Mobile Thinks It Owns A General Color

from the ownership-society dept

You might think that throwing a word like "magenta" into the Techdirt search engine wouldn't get you any results. But you would be wrong about that and you'd be wrong entirely because of T-Mobile and its parent company Deutsche Telekom. See, Telekom has trademark rights in several countries for a very specific shade of magenta. And with those trademarks, Telekom rather enjoys threatening other businesses that dare to use anything that remotely looks like magenta in their trade dress, whether the color in question is actually magenta or not, and regardless of whether the other company is even a competitor or not.

And Telekom is still at it to the present. A German court has informed a startup insurance company out of New York called Lemonade that it must cease to use the shade of pink it's been using in it's branding for three years.

New York-based Lemonade is a 3-year-old company that lives completely online and mostly focuses on homeowners and renter’s insurance. The company uses a similar color to magenta — it says it's "pink" — in its marketing materials and its website. But Lemonade was told by German courts that it must cease using its color after launching its services in that country, which is also home to T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom. Although the ruling only applies in Germany, Lemonade says it fears the decision will set a precedent and expand to other jurisdictions such as the U.S. or Europe.

“If some brainiac at Deutsche Telekom had invented the color, their possessiveness would make sense,” Daniel Schreiber, CEO and co-founder of Lemonade, said in a statement. “Absent that, the company’s actions just smack of corporate bully tactics, where legions of lawyers attempt to hog natural resources – in this case a primary color—that rightfully belong to everyone.”

Here is the branding for Lemonade. Judge for yourself whether you think it is somehow confusing with T-Mobile.

Does that branding use a pinkish purple? Yes, yes it does. How close is that color to that trademarked by Telekom? I have no earthly idea, nor do I much care. T-Mobile provides cellular service, whereas Lemonade provides insurance services. Those aren't in the same market. And whatever distinction Telekom might claim that its magenta color has earned, that distinction certainly doesn't magically make any of this confusing.

And, separately, it's still rather galling that a company like Telekom can somehow own the rights to a color in a way that causes it to think nobody else, full stop, can use it. And, yet, Lemonade complied with the court's instructions. But not without making another move.

Although Lemonade has complied with the ruling by removing its pink color from marketing materials in Germany, it’s also trying to turn the legal matter into an opportunity. The company today began throwing some shade in social media under the hashtag “#FreeThePink,” though a quick check on Twitter shows it’s gained little traction thus far: Schreiber, the company’s CEO, holds the top tweet under “#FreeThePink” with 13 retweets and 42 likes.

Lemonade also filed a motion today with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO, to invalidate Deutsche Telekom’s magenta trademark.

It would be absolutely delicious if Lemonade ended up getting Telekom's trademark invalidated. Free the pink.

Filed Under: magenta, trademark
Companies: deutsche telekom, lemonade, t-mobile

FCC Approved T-Mobile Sprint Merger Without Even Seeing The Full Details

from the ill-communication dept

Surprising nobody, the Ajit Pai FCC last week approved T-Mobile's $26 billion merger with Sprint. The approval comes despite that fact that antitrust experts, consumer advocates, and a long list of others have pointed out the deal will reduce wireless sector competition by 25%, inevitably driving up costs and reducing the quality of service (40 years of US telecom history suggests as much). And while T-Mobile and Sprint insists the deal will create jobs, both union reps and Wall Street predict the deal could kill anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs.

Granted last week's vote of approval was really just a formality. The FCC's majority commissioners had already made it clear they'd be signing off on the deal. Troubling but unsurprising is the repeated allegations that the Trump FCC majority signed off on the deals before seeing most of the actual details, something FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel was quick to point out in a statement:

"...the process that got us here is equally troubling. Three of my colleagues agreed to this transaction months ago without having any legal, engineering, or economic analysis from the agency before us. Consumers deserve better from the Washington authorities charged with reviewing this transaction."

Yeah, who needs to see the actual details on a transaction that will dramatically alter the US wireless landscape before voting?

Former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn shared a similar observation in a statement circulated to the media:

"Today’s decision is the culmination of one of the most irregular and opaque processes in FCC history. The FCC majority prejudged the merits of this merger two months before the Justice Department found the combination of T-Mobile and Sprint to be anticompetitive and required the creation of a new fourth competitor to pass legal muster. Despite this radical change in the merger, Chairman Pai has refused to put the new arrangement out for public comment."

No willingness to look at hard data, an active disdain for public input; where have we seen that before? Worth noting the DOJ has followed a similar tack, ignoring advice from its own staffers to sign off on the deal.

Both the DOJ and FCC continue to push a remedy for the problems the deal creates that few think will actually work. They're hoping to have T-Mobile shovel off some additional spectrum and its prepaid wireless brand to Dish Network, who'll then attempt to build a functional fourth competitor to replace Sprint over the next half decade. But Dish has a long, long history of spectrum squatting and empty promises when it comes to wireless (just ask T-Mobile). And this FCC has exactly zero credibility when it comes to holding telecom giants accountable for, well, anything.

To make that deal work, the government will have to helicopter mom the hell out of the deal; ensuring T-Mobile lives up to its obligations and Dish meets its goals. It will also have to hold AT&T and Verizon accountable when they inevitably try to scuttle the deal in a bid to prevent a fourth viable competitor from truly emerging, something that, even under optimal conditions, isn't supposed to happen for years. Imagine thinking that's a more sensible route than just blocking the same deal that's already been blocked several times because it's clearly harmful to workers, consumers, and the market?

Filed Under: ajit pai, competition, details, fcc, merger, telcos
Companies: sprint, t-mobile

New York City Sues T-Mobile For Ripping Off Its Prepaid Users

from the not-very-uncarrier dept

While T-Mobile has built a brand on the claim it's hugely different from the other big wireless carriers, it routinely likes to illustrate the limits of that claim. Like the time T-Mobile CEO John Legere mocked the EFF after the group noted T-Mobile routinely violated net neutrality (it also supported killing the FCC rules). Or the time the company hired Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski, shortly after he'd mocked a kid with Downe's Syndrome on live TV, just to get a leg up on its Sprint merger approval process. And that's before you get to the steady stream of bullshit T-Mobile has been pushing to get that deal approved.

That's not to say that T-Mobile hasn't done some good things in the industry, just that when push comes to shove the entire consumer-friendly schtick is only skin deep.

Another case in point: New York City has filed suit against T-Mobile (pdf) alleging that the company's "Metro" (formerly MetroPCS) prepaid arm routinely rips off its customers. More specifically, the complaint alleges that Metro routinely sells customers used phones disguised as new, buries caveats, restrictions, and surcharges in fine print, and offers a "30 day money back guarantee" the complaint claims is "wholly illusory, and completely deceptive":

"...the MetroPROMISE® Return Policy has nothing in common with a “30 day guarantee,” nor does it resemble what the Virtual Chat Assistant describes. Instead, it expires in seven days and two of its most restrictive and unintuitive features – its inapplicability to phones bought for an existing line of service and defective phones – go unmentioned by the Virtual Chat Assistant."

In other words, T-Mobile's prepaid stores are using the exact bullshit tactics CEO John Legere has spent several years mocking AT&T and Verizon for on Twitter. The complaint says misleading behavior was the norm across numerous 56 Metro locations (run directly and by "authorized dealers") across all five boroughs of New York City. This particular example is notable:

"In January 2019, Vashti Anais Wagner shopped for a phone advertised for $599. Defendant Metropolitan Wireless Anandpur Inc. (“Anandpur”) charged her $710 for the phone, according to a receipt. The Anandpur employee then filled out a SmartPay contract, entered Ms. Wagner’s email address as noemailft67484@gmail.com, and falsely recorded the phone’s purchase price as $1,150. The employee did not show Ms. Wagner the contract, appears to have e-signed it in her name, and did not tell her that she would be leasing the phone rather than buying it outright. Thus, unbeknownst to Ms. Wagner, SmartPay had leased the phone to her for $199.21 per month, totaling $2,191.30 – $1,592.30 more than the advertised price; $1,481.30 more than the prices supposedly charged by the Metro Store; and $1,041 more than price surreptitiously recorded on the contract by the Metro Store employee.

Charging users $2,191 for a $699 phone, eroding user rights with fine print, and hitting customers with "illegal taxes, mystery fees, and fees for unwanted services" is not very "uncarrier" (the term T-Mobile marketing uses to make it clear how it's not like other giant US telecom operators). But again, if you've watched T-Mobile suck up to Trump at his hotels during its bid to get its $26 billion merger with Sprint approved, this disconnect likely doesn't come as much of a surprise.

To be fair, T-Mobile's presence in the market was initially a good thing. While T-Mobile's impact on wireless pricing has largely been over-hyped, the company's aggressive tactics early on helped pressure other carriers into lowering costs of international roaming, eliminating the scourge of long-term contracts, and killing off several other dumb tactics that had been industry mainstays for years. But as T-Mobile grows more powerful it's becoming apparent they're not so different as marketing would suggest, and if the Sprint merger is consummated and competition is reduced by 25%, that point is going to be made even clearer in short order.

Filed Under: fine print, metro, new york, new york attorney general, rip off, scams
Companies: metropcs, t-mobile

T-Mobile Employees Want Promises They Won't Be Fired Post Merger

from the good-luck-with-that dept

We've noted repeatedly how the Sprint, T-Mobile merger isn't great. There's forty years of history showing how telecom industry megamergers almost always result in less competition, higher prices, and fewer jobs, and this deal is no exception. Eliminating one of just four US wireless carriers is likely to result in higher prices (see: Canada or Ireland). And Wall Street analysts not only predict the deal could eliminate anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs, data suggests the consolidation could result in employees across the sector making less money even if they work at other companies.

Of course if you ask T-Mobile and Sprint executives, they'll tell you that none of this will actually happen. They'll tell you that the deal will somehow create more competition and jobs, despite (again) history showing that this rarely, if ever happens and such deals almost exclusively benefit executives and shareholders.

Hoping for a little reassurance, T-Mobile employees this week penned a letter to Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges (Deutsche Telekom has a majority stake in T-Mobile) asking for guarantees they won't see layoffs and pay cuts in the wake of the deal:

"T-Mobile US retail employees and technicians delivered a letter late Tuesday for Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges, seeking assurances that their jobs and paychecks will be safe if the wireless carrier is allowed to merge with Sprint, its smaller rival.

T-Mobile Workers United, with about 500 members and backed by the Communications Workers of America and the German union ver.di, urged Hoettges to “make solid and verifiable” assurances that jobs will be safe, paychecks will not shrink and management will not interfere in union activities."

These workers shouldn't hold their breath.

From Comcast to AT&T, telecom merger after telecom merger begins with a laundry list of promises that nothing whatsoever will change and if things do change, it will only be for the better. Then, everything changes as redundant retail support, and executive positions are inevitably eliminated. It's a finely oiled machine you could set your watch to, yet each time a new merger is proposed the press collectively nods dumbly as if pre-merger guarantees mean much of anything, and government doesn't have a multi-generational history of failing to hold companies accountable when they blatantly ignore merger conditions.

It's a problem that's particularly pronounced in the telecom sector, where tens of thousands of jobs are being lost due to mindless consolidation and a mantra of "growth for growth's sake." Saturated growth in fixed and mobile broadband has driven companies to mergers in the hopes of attaining growth, but as AT&T's Time Warner and DirecTV acquisitions or Frontier's gobbling up of aging phone lines have made clear, being bigger doesn't magically equate to being better. In fact it's usually the opposite as even bigger, debt-saddled companies fail to scale customer service to handle the growth.

Why the US seems incapable of learning from history on this subject is a question for the ages. Right Now, T-Mobile is telling regulators that the merger will magically create thousands of new jobs. It's also promising to keep both Sprint's Overland Park, Kansas and T-Mobile's Bellevue, Washington headquarters both intact. All while we see zero negative impact and increased competition despite fewer overall competitors. History has repeatedly shown such claims to be little more than fluff and nonsense, yet regulators at both the FCC and DOJ (both not coincidentally now run by former telecom lawyers) are happy to believe the promises.

Filed Under: consolidation, employees, jobs, mergers
Companies: sprint, t-mobile