PayPal Inc. recently filed a lawsuit against Pandora Media Inc., a music streaming company, for copying the style of PayPal’s “P” logo. On the surface, one might ask, why would anyone confuse an online payment service provider with an Internet music streaming company regardless of how similar their “P” logos are?
That is certainly an argument that Pandora could attempt to make. Pandora may argue that its “P” is not confusing with PayPal’s “P” because PayPal’s logo contains an overlapping “P” image with two shades of blue, whereas Pandora’s logo consists of a singular blue “P.” Also, Pandora could attempt to argue that there is no consumer confusion because Pandora provides a significantly different service than what PayPal provides.
PayPal has argued that the overall similarities of the logos are obvious and unlawful. In fact, PayPal points to its service users who took to Twitter last fall to complain about accidentally opening Pandora when they intended to access PayPal. From PayPal’s perspective, it has spent a number of years developing a successful brand and Pandora’s recent implementation of its new logo that is similar to PayPal’s was intended to take advantage of that success for its own use.
Additionally, PayPal could conceivably make the argument that its services are in fact associated with online music services because a number of online music retailers and service providers use PayPal as a method for users to complete transactions and therefore, there is a valid argument for consumer confusion. While it is unclear if that argument will be made, in its lawsuit, PayPal does allege that Pandora is very much aware of what its logo looks like because Pandora has PayPal’s service logo on its site for Pandora users to use as a transaction option for payments.
Furthermore, PayPal has asserted that Pandora is attempting to use the PayPal logo as a way to overcome its “serious commercial challenges” in the music streaming service industry by latching on to PayPal’s logo which is viewed as a beacon of success.
It is too early in this lawsuit to predict an outcome. However, this lawsuit epitomizes a point that we at Greenspoon Marder advise our trademark clients: Select a brand (and a logo) that is unique, distinctive and identifiable to avoid litigation such as that faced by Pandora, which will be costly and whose outcome is uncertain.