  The problem of finding the maximum number of vertex-disjoint uni-color paths
in an edge-colored graph (called MaxCDP) has been recently introduced in
literature, motivated by applications in social network analysis. In this paper
we investigate how the complexity of the problem depends on graph parameters
(namely the number of vertices to remove to make the graph a collection of
disjoint paths and the size of the vertex cover of the graph), which makes
sense since graphs in social networks are not random and have structure. The
problem was known to be hard to approximate in polynomial time and not
fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) for the natural parameter. Here, we show that
it is still hard to approximate, even in FPT-time. Finally, we introduce a new
variant of the problem, called MaxCDDP, whose goal is to find the maximum
number of vertex-disjoint and color-disjoint uni-color paths. We extend some of
the results of MaxCDP to this new variant, and we prove that unlike MaxCDP,
MaxCDDP is already hard on graphs at distance two from disjoint paths.
