Little did I know when I was writing What’s in an Orange-Colored Home Improvement Business Name? — that two days later, orange-color marks would be asserted in a trademark infringement lawsuit filed in Minnesota federal district court over competing building construction services: Cedar Valley Exteriors, Inc. v. JNS Builders LLC. A copy of the complaint can be found here.
Yeah, you read it right, Home Depot doesn’t appear to be involved in this one.
Two federal registrations are at issue, one covering orange as applied to the shirts worn by CedarValley employees and the other covering orange as applied to signs (like the one shown on the left), both for building construction and repair services.
The complaint is pretty vague and conclusory about the conduct it is objecting to, speaking of orange that is being used as a mark to promote competing services, with no examples.
JNS Builders’ website shows use of an orange-colored triangular logo containing the letters JNS, and the orange-colored logo appears on blue-colored employee shirts. If this is what they’re after, perhaps that helps explain the vagueness in the pleading.
And, maybe the growth of an industry cluster around the color orange is becoming visible even more quickly than we might have expected?