If you ask people in North America which language learning company they associate with the color yellow, they will most likely answer with Rosetta Stone. The yellow boxes the software was sold in for decades in shops and kiosks left their mark on the (potential) language learners’ mind.
If you ask me or any other German, the answer will be different. For us, yellow means Langenscheidt when it comes to language learning. The dictionaries of the German publishing house were essential for all learners in school, university and ended up on our bookshelves to collect dust later on.
When Rosetta Stone entered the German market in 2010, Langenscheidt had just managed to obtain a German color mark registration for “printed bilingual dictionaries”, which the publisher immediately used to sue Rosetta Stone for trademark infringement.
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