ExxonMobil has sued FX Networks and its studio affiliates to block their use of a logo that the oil company says infringes on its interlocking XX logo.

"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 Wednesday in federal court in Houston.

FX Networks and its studio affiliates, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., started the FXX TV network last month with a logo featuring an interlocking XX design, according to the complaint.

The network refused to drop the interlocking Xs when the oil company requested the change, according to the complaint.

ExxonMobil's filing 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.

ExxonMobil is seeking a court order barring the network from using the design "and any other mark confusingly similar," along with treble damages.

"This lawsuit is entirely meritless," Julie Henderson, a spokeswoman for FX Networks, said in an e-mail.

"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.'"

~ Bloomberg News ~