Quick, can you tell these two swirling orbs apart? That’s Sony Ericsson’s logo on the left, and Clearwire’s on the right — and SE thinks they’re confusingly similar enough to have filed a federal trademark lawsuit in Virginia.
The situation is pretty basic: Sony Ericsson holds trademark registrations on the various iterations of its sphere logos, and the company thinks Clearwire is confusing the mobile market with its version — and it definitely doesn’t want Clearwire to stamp the logo on phones, which Clearwire is eventually planning to do, money problems or no.
SE’s asked the court to forbid Clearwire from using the logo and for a host of monetary damages, which seems like a big risk for a company that’s having cashflow problems to begin with — we’ll see what happens.
