Apparently the second-tier social network community isn’t big enough for two company names that begin with the letter P – and the fight over putting the letter in a logo has commenced, with Path and Pinterest facing off.
Pinterest is trying to trademark its logo. But the trademarking process isn’t going to go off without a hitch … a hitch named Dave Morin’s legal squad.
TechCrunch reports Path is trying to squash Pinterest’s efforts to get its white-and-red curly P logo trademarked. This is because Path also employs a white-and-red curly P logo. To stop Pinterest from gaining dominance in the white-and-red curly P logo trademark game, Path asked the trademark office for an extension so it could file an opposition.
Path’s desire to P-block Pinterest isn’t entirely motivated by a Gollum-like fixation on obtaining the trademark for themselves; if Pinterest gets the trademark, it may be able to prevent Path from using its current too-similar logo. But if Path is able to make its case, according to TechCrunch, it won’t be able to prevent Pinterest from continuing to use its logo. So this issue is less about Path trying to wrest sole ownership of white-and-red curly P logos everywhere – it’s just trying to make sure it can keep using its current logo. To double-reverse P-block Pinterest, Path would then have to go ahead and file its own trademark claim to the white-and-red curly P logo.
One could argue that Path could make better use of its time and resources making itself a less spammy, more relevant social network. One could also argue that neither logo is that cool and maybe they should just re-do them, although one last argument could say that the last time there was a high-profile logo revamp it was Yahoo’s. And that thing looked like it came from the Graphic Design: 101 class at the University of Phoenix.
But then perhaps one is just a tech journalist thinking aloud on a Friday.
