BP loses battle to trademark the colour green in Australia

A famous case of this sort was Cadbury, trademarking purple back in 2005 or so - but they eventually lost that last year http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/04/cadbury-dair... Many other similar cases still stand however. http://boingboing.net/2005/03/25/cadbury-trademarks-t.html

Interesting, I have seen "The colour Purple is a trademark of Cadbury (or equivalent wording) as recent as April this year on new advertising.

"BP’s most recent claim on the colour extended to fuel, car service stations and take-away food services."

Yes color isn't a Patent but color psychology means a company can gain unfair competitive advantage and abuse it to own the market e.g. yellow/red for food (association). Colors should not be patentable.

Didn't T-Mobile try to pull something similar with magenta?