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PayPal Sues Pandora Over 'Patently Unlawful' Logo (billboard.com)
PayPal has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Pandora, arguing that the company's minimalist logo "dilutes the distinctiveness" of its own branding. "Element by element and in overall impression, the similarities between the logos are striking, obvious, and patently unlawful," the lawsuit alleges. Billboard reports: In October 2016, Pandora announced it was redesigning its logo from a thin, serifed "P" into the chunky, sans serifed "P" that it is today. The color scheme was also changed from midnight blue to a softer shade of blue. By comparison, PayPal's logo, active since 2014, also features a minimalist-looking "P" in a sans serif font and sporting a blue color palette. PayPal's mark actually consists of two overlapping and slanted "Ps," whereas Pandora keeps it to one. Both P's lack a hole. It is because of these similarities that PayPal believes customers of both companies are unable to distinguish the two, and that many are complaining about inadvertently opening Pandora instead of PayPal on their smartphones. The lawsuit includes various screen grabs, primarily from Twitter, of people noting the similarities. PayPal's lawsuit also points out Pandora's current struggles as a brand, saying that since it is primarily an ad-supported service, it "has no obvious path to profitability," especially given "overwhelming competition" from the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. The suit alleges that Pandora purposely "latched itself on to the increasingly popular" PayPal logo look-and-feel as part of its efforts to reverse its fortunes.
One's a P, the other is two P's. Likelihood of confusion? I think PayPal's pissed that they suck and Pandora doesn't.
I take it there's a PayPal app that people actually use?
(Switches over to the App Store to look)
Okay, I guess they're worried about the double-vision demographic?
#DeleteChrome
but no one expected the Spanish Inquisition...
How is it reasonable that anyone can own a blue P in a bland font.
Sure, they're not identical, but I can see how someone not in the know could be confused by it. Pandora have been around long enough to be well aware of what the PayPal logo looks like, colours used, etc. In fact, had the "P" been black or some other colour, PayPal may not have even cared.
They're also required to protect their Trademark, or they could potentially lose it. So I'd say cut PayPal some slack.
Not a case of "rounded corners" here.
The case is total bull.
Legal fees can be a killer, especially for a company trying to be profitable.
Someone is using PayPal as a shill to hurt Pandora. Hopefully a judge sees this and punts the dispute and makes PayPal pay Pandora's legal fees.
Paypal's logo looks like the butt of someone wearing blue jeans. Pandora's does not.
In my country (Australia) a trademark needs to be registered and used in specified classes of goods (34 classes) or services (11 classes). PayPal would fall squarely into "Class 36 Electronic payment services" and Pandora "Class 38 Delivery of digital music by telecommunications". These two trademarks would not clash here (even if PayPal had registered in class 38 they are not using that mark for PayPal Music). Do trademarks work differently in the US?
Protection of the IP in the design is not the same thing as trademark protection.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Isn't that the Pied Piper logo? I liked pied pipers original door art work better than their final one.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why would Pandora like to be confused with PayPal? Is there any actual reason for it? Would it benefit Pandora in any way to be confused with an online payment system?
I mean, sure, they look similar... but it's not like the PayPal logo is something unique. Slanted Ps in blue with the most basic principle of minimalism applied, big f*cking whoop. It's lazy design in it's ultimate form.
And please.. pleeease, if you are a designer/typographer with the urge to reply to me to say how a logo like that takes hundreds of man hours to come about, and how much time and money companies invest into that, please don't. It's a stupid f*cking P.
Their logo is identical to Pandora's new one. It's exactly the same in every respect except for the color. PAM has been using that logo for several years, at least.
https://portlandartmuseum.org/
Here's the short form of what he above poster said:
Yes, a trademark only covers the types of things you sell.
Apple can sell computers, while Apple sells records, with no problem. Buyers won't confuse Apple records with Apple computers.
The problem only arises when Apple (computers) starts selling music (itunes) or a possibly a music workstation.
HOWEVER, if you see a red shirt with white lettering that says COKE, or Coca Cola, buyers will likely associate that with the beverage company. A brand as famous and strong as Coke could cause confusion on most any merchandise.
The IRA was about getting the British out of Ireland. It had fuck all to do with religion other than it correlated with the politics on this occasion.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Don't know why you're modded down because you're correct.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Oh the PayPal logo is all the rage with the kids. Their lawyers can explain it all to you.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Many company's register their trade marks in adjacent industries, not just the classes that they operate in. This it to allow possible future expansion, as well as to prevent something like this from happening - a company in a different, but adjacent industry, having a similar mark as your own.
I headed up payments and collections innovation in a large major bank, and we defined adjacent industries quite broadly. Most people think of adjacent industries or sectors as being those related to what they do... but we defined it as being " ...where there is a strong likelihood of there being significant customer or enduser overlap with a small or negligible symmetric difference. "
I would guess that PayPal believes that there is a high overlap in Pandora's and PayPal's users, with a very small symmetric difference, making the likelihood that most of the people seeing the new Pandora logo will do so within a materially narrow time-space of having interacted with the PayPal logo - which would lead to both brand dilution as well as brand association, at least in the short term while people are getting used to the revised Pandora logo.
The IRA was anti-British, but it was also heavily involved in the Roman Catholic-Protestant troubles in Northern Ireland - it killed a lot of people for simply being a member of the wrong branch of the Catholic Church (what people refer to as the Catholic Church in common usage is actually Roman Catholic - pretty much every Protestant church considers itself Catholic, just not Roman Catholic).
The grandparent is referring to the Official IRA, which is commonly referred to simply as the IRA as it has had the greatest claim to the name since 1969. During the period the OIRA was active, The Republic of Ireland was (and remains) an independent Catholic country. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but has a majority Protestant population who do not wish to become part of the Republic of Ireland. Attempting to incorporate Northern Ireland into The Republic of Ireland against the wishes of the majority of the population of Northern Ireland sounds like conquest to me.
During the period that the OIRA was active, they killed more people in the UK than Islamic terrorists have done in total. They did not cause Catholic churches to empty and their supporters toured America (particularly New York) raising funds to buy weapons. The US Government refused to block this. It only ended when, for some reason, around 2001 it became unfashionable to fund terrorists.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is specifically a separation of church and state.
Yeah this is why MP keeps telling us that he is "...a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican—in that order"
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
PayPal's media awareness dropped to 5 year lows, the board was afraid that this would affect their stock price. When their geeks didn't have anything to make a splash with they turned to their attorneys. Nothing to see here folks ...
I guess that explains why it's written "In God we trust" on all your coins and bills.
#DeleteFacebook
There is specifically a separation of church and state.
Yeah this is why MP keeps telling us that he is "...a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican—in that order"
Mike Pence is christian but that's the point of separation of church and state. He can be christian all he wants, he can even vote for laws favored by christians but he still can't explicitly pass a law for or against a religion. That's the reason Trump's muslim ban was overturned. Because Trump had specifically stated he was going to target muslims, it was found unconstitutional. Separation of church and state doesn't mean you can't be religious, it means there shouldn't be any laws about religion. We violate this a little when we do stuff like banning prayer in school but for the most part the USA does a pretty good job of keeping religion and politics separate.
I use both services and never saw any similarities between the logos.
There is a Constitutional law which says Congress shall make no law establishing a State religion or infringing upon the free exercise of religion. That means Congress cannot make laws declaring a religion of the United States, or banning a religion, or whatnot. Congress also can't give any regulatory body the power to enforce any such thing.
Congress also cannot produce a legal basis for removing bibles, torah, qu'ran, or the Tao from the curriculum of public schools. Congress can neither prevent nor produce a legal basis to order a Federal courthouse to adorn itself with religious displays. Congress cannot produce any sort of law allowing a legal gag of the practice of religion by state or Federal legislatures, either, meaning that the Senate can vote for its proceedings to open with prayer, and any Senator may abstain from said prayer without legal repercussion.
The "Separation of Church and State" doesn't exist. The uneducated make an argument that, somewhere, there's a line in the Constitution declaring that the Government must be 100% secular, agnostic of all religion, and neutral in all aspects of its behavior. This has been used to found arguments against police departments which place crosses at sites of roadside deaths, even though you can't make any such legal argument against the practice even via the Incorporation Clause of the 14th Amendment (applying the 14th would make it illegal for the State to stop the police department from doing any such thing).
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I think you mean the Provisional IRA, not official IRA.
1922 Original IRA - 1969 Provisional IRA - (1994 Continuity IRA, 1997 Real IRA)
Basically, one generation ages, settles, and makes peace, and the next cries Betrayal! and takes up arms. And I say that as someone generally sympathetic to the Republican cause.
A logo based on a stylized letter of the alphabet should not receive trademark protection, period. If you want your logo to be protected, you're going to have to be a bit more creative than taking a letter of the alphabet, tilting it, removing its hole, giving it a color, and declaring it belongs to you and nobody else is allowed to do something similar. Facebook set a really bad precedent. Despite how useless I think Twitter is, at least they came up with a creative and recognizable logo.
tl;dr - Letters of the alphabet should not be trademarkable, in any shape or form. It just creates too much risk of accidental infringement.
"Look... me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds."
I think both should lose, both and all companys shouldnt be allowed to copyright any Letters of the alphabet or numbers fruits or veggies, plants or trees, animals, bugs you get the idea.. Copyright your business name that's it move on.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Your reputation is pretty bad. People confusing you with Pandora is more likely to improve how they think of you, so you might want to roll with it.
> However, Trademark law is not around to prevent you from accidentally launching the wrong program on your computer. Or is it?
That's an interesting question. Launching or installing (Roughly using or buying). It's supposed to be primarily* to protect the consumer from getting a product or service other than the one the think they are getting. If you're trying to get Paypal, and you make a selection based on the Paypal trademark / service mark, but end up with the wrong service due to a confusingly similar mark, there is a case to be made.
I take no position on who should win, but given Paypal has documented many examples of actual consumer confusion, it's not a ridiculous case.
* also it is supposed to protect those who spend years providing a quality service in order to build a trusted brand. But mostly it's supposed to be about if the consumer ends up with something other than what they are trying to get.
Imagine if another app had an icon that looked EXACTLY like your favorite web browser, perhaps Firefox. So every time you tried to use the web you have a 50/50 chance of getting Facebook's app instead. That would be a) highly annoying and b) unfair for Facebook to trick users into opening the Facebook app instead of their web browser. If they did that by copying the Chrome or Firefox logo, that would be trademark violation.
> Brand confusion is you walk out of the store having purchased a confusingly-labelled product, take it home, and attribute your experience to the other product.
Not according to any court, anywhere. When you want Coca-Cola, and you pick up a bottle that appears to be marked with Coke's trademark and put it into your basket, that's brand confusion. That would be a problem, even if when you got home you realized they had tricked you into buying Cocka-Colla. Consumers shouldn't be tricked into using, buying, installing, etc products and services by deceptive markings.
Note that "oh but our red and and white bottle says Coka, not Coke" doesn't make it not deceptive. If it fools people into picking up the wrong product, it's deceptive.
Most people don't buy Pandora services at the time they install the app. The revenue-generating commmercial activity, the trade, occurs when you use the service. You literally trade ads for music. Speaking of "hence the term", hence the term service mark, applicable when you're using a service.
Were that not true, your argument would imply it's okay for me to make a TV network called NBC, amd there would be no trademark or service mark issues because viewers don't pay with CASH when they watch, they pay by watching ads.
your argument would imply it's okay for me to make a TV network called NBC, amd there would be no trademark or service mark issues
They would go after the companies who are advertising products for sale on your service.
I think you could; However, the FCC would not permit you to do this, and would levy big-time fines if you tried, because they regulate the spectrum, and Cable, and some of the rules amount to You may not mis-identify your signal or transmit a false, deceptive, or misleading signal. Doing so can impact your licenses or result in criminal charges. Another station already has a license registration that allows them to use that station name, so you can't, because to broadcast you will have to register your own station name, And they're not going to let your name be NBC.