ExxonMobil sued FX Networks and its studio affiliates to block their use of a logo the oil company says infringes on its interlocking XX logo. FX Networks and its studio affiliates, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and Twenty-First Century Fox, started the FXX TV network last month with a logo featuring an interlocking XX design, according to the complaint. ExxonMobil is seeking a court order barring the network from using the design “and any other mark confusingly similar,” along with treble damages.
The network refused to drop the interlocking Xs when the oil company requested the change, said a Bloomberg story.
“ExxonMobil has invested many millions of dollars for more than four decades in advertising and promoting” the logo, David Beck, ExxonMobil’s attorney, said in the filing in federal court in Houston.
The suit includes several citations to Internet postings in which viewers question whether there is a relationship between FXX and the world’s largest publicly traded oil company because of the similarities between the logos.
“This lawsuit is entirely meritless,” Julie Henderson, a spokeswoman for FX Networks, told Bloomberg: “It is unfathomable” that a consumer would confuse Exxon’s logo with that of FXX, she said. “We are confident that viewers won’t tune into FXX looking for gas or motor oil and drivers won’t pull up to an Exxon pump station expecting to get ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.’”
RBR-TVBR observation: Taking a look at the two logos, they are significantly different. The X’s are a different color, point in a different direction and with the FXX logo, both of the X’s connect with the F. ExxonMobil’s X’s do not connect with any other letter. We think that FXX should move forward here without fear, especially since there are no similarities to what the two companies do. However, ExxonMobil is a television advertiser…
