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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

Aren’t you just describing what trademarks are though? Yes, as you say, the whole point is that you cannot confuse consumers about the origin of your product. And all a trademark is is a public record of a distinguishing characteristic that, if you use that characteristic for your product in a certain context, is likely to confuse consumers.

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No, trademarking “red” for soft drinks is stupid, but people still shouldn’t be allowed to use Coca Colas labels to sell non Coca Cola soft drinks.

If you want to make a red label with white letters on it that is named Awesome Cola, then you should absolutely be allowed to do that. If Coca Cola can’t protect their business by making the best product then they can frankly fuck right off. This is the European mindset at least, consumers owe nothing to corporations.

The thing is, to show that a product violates a trademark requires showing that consumers are confused or will be confused about the origin of the product. This seems to always get lost when people see sensational descriptions of trademarks like "DeWalt owns the colors yellow and black." No, they don't own a color or combination of colors. It doesn't even mean that no other power tool can be yellow or black, because it's probably possible to make a power tool that is yellow or black but which doesn't confuse consumers into thinking it's a DeWalt power tool.

I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about trademarks, but we’ve had a few cases here in Denmark where a small business were basically on a path to close down because a larger chain reported the small business for trademark infringement over something silly like having the same last name in your business that the large chain is called. Because of the way the law works, you have to spend some months defending yourself (and shut down your business while you change your name/logo/whatever), which often isn’t affordable for small businesses.

Luckily Denmark being Denmark, as soon as these things hit the news the public responds by hating the larger business and throwing amazing amounts of support at the small businesses. I just don’t think the law is very good when the public needs to circumvent it in order for the small businesses to survive, even when the small businesses are in the right to begin with.

So you are very likely absolutely correct, but because the world sort of sucks, the copyright law still hurts people it shouldn’t. I’m not sure there is an easy solution, because obviously you wouldn’t want direct copy products or DeWalt in stores either, but it’s certainly not good the way it is right now.

Re using colors can be helpful for consumers.

In the potato chip market in Australia, across multiple brands, purple means salt and vinegar, green means chicken, yellow means cheese and onion, blue means plain salt.

In the soft drink isle, red means cola, yellow means lemon, orange means orange, etc.

In New Zealand, green means salt & vinegar, light green means green onion, yellow absolutely means chicken, blue means plain salt, light blue usually means sour cream and chives, and purple means random stuff like bacon.

It does depend on the brand but these are usually the colours.

Yellow has to mean chicken though - it would be weird if it didn't!!

> chicken

I'm shocked to learn of such a thing.

I didn't know they had them in Australia too. It's a common chip flavor in Canada along with ketchup.

It's completely foreign to me too. I'm sure they're tasty, but I'm having trouble imagining what they would taste like.

If they're anything like Chicken in a Biskit crackers (should be available in most supermarkets in the US), they taste like something that's been dipped in broth.

> is likely to confuse consumers.

Yet strangely it is perfectly legal for corporations to confuse consumers with misleading packaging and other tricks.

And I am sure if you actually allowed other ISPs in Germany using magenta as color you'll quickly see that nobody will confuse the two. Everyone unfortunate enough to interact with T-Mobile will be very aware of the differences.

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