Color: The Next Limited Resource?
sixrevisions.com
sixrevisions.com
Being serious, I understand the need to protect your brand from people who would capitalize on the trust and recognition the brand has built. From what I understand, with trademark law definitions are often based on a 'reasonable person's' potential deception (eg. would a reasonable person mistake your generic kleenex for brand name Kleenex?). All other things held constant, it would appear that the mental capacity of a reasonable person has declined.
I think you must take into account that logo colours are often used in other aspects of corporate appearance. The colour may be used as a band across an envelope, a letter, or an ad. Done well, you really only need to see that coloured band to know who's sending it.
If it is a complete colorscheme then I have less of a problem with it.
It's funny how this seems to be a phone company thing, in NL KPN (the old telco monopolist) has a claim on light green.
Exactly.
If memory serves, you can't hold copyright on the design of a font in the US for similar reasons. A file containing the instructions describing the shape and properties of a font is subject to copyright, but you can't stop someone else from writing a different file with their own instructions, which happens to reproduce equivalent shapes afterwards. Otherwise, the first big companies to grab rights to a basic serif, basic sans, etc. would soon be charging a licence fee to anyone wanting to communicate in writing.
If similar common sense doesn't apply with colours, then as I will shortly be creating Primary Designs Ltd., a business specialising in web design using the colours red, green and blue, I look forward to a profitable lawsuit against T-Mobile, whose web site does appear to activate all three of my company's colours when viewed on a typical computer display.
Seriously, if you build your entire brand around a colour, then I'm afraid that's your own foolishness. Using a colour in an attempt to pass one business off as another is wrong and shouldn't be allowed any more than any other falsification/trademark infringement, but mere use of a colour (particularly an obvious, popular one such as magenta or orange) should not in itself constitute an attempt at passing off. That's just crazy law, probably bought and paid for by expensive lobbyists.
It works, it's a simple as that.
But that should mean to me that if you don't want any confusion that you should pick a black-and-white scheme and force the customer to read instead of using legal tricks to monopolize part of the spectrum.
You're being hopelessly naïve if you think they'll let black and white alone just because.
I don't confuse IBM and Intel, Barclay's and Prudential, or Ford and GM simply because they occupy similar locations in the color space.
This is an interesting article but I don't think we're going to deplete the color space the way we're going to deplete the IPv4 address space. People and companies have been using distinctive colors for a very long time, and we've managed to avoid this problem quite well.
"Where a trademark is used generically, a trademark owner may need to take special proactive measures to retain exclusive rights to the trademark. Xerox corporation was able to generally prevent the genericide of its core trademark through an extensive public relations campaign advising consumers to "photocopy" instead of "xerox" documents."
So what???? Just because We've decided to use the Pantone system to simply things doesn't mean a Pantone Swatch looks the same in all lights (Luminance). Within each swatch, there are infinite subcolors.
So yeah, it's impossible to copyright a magenta- although you can probably specify which Pantone magenta for the sake of certain pigment specifications you mean, you can't trademark magenta. There are infinite magentas...
An sRGB or Adobe RGB colorspace is just a specific cut of LAB*, since there is a specified singular white-point rather than a fluctuating relative luminance. You'll still get infinite color problems with both, as well as Metamerism (different colors via spectrum that look the same to the human eye)
So Trademark all you want. I'll stick your magenta on a yellow background. It's now a different magenta because of perceptual issues.
A bit of google and wiki later, I read the surreal ending to his life: "[Klein] suffered a first heart attack whilst watching the film Mondo Cane at the Cannes Film Festival[...] Two more heart attacks followed, the second of which killed him on 6 June 1962. His son, Yves, was born a few months later in Nice...[His son] grew up to study architecture, design, cybernetics theory of systems, and Fine Arts sculpture. He went on to create robotized sculptures."
One thing leads to another and before I know it I have read a series of things that together induced the sensation of having experienced a moving art installation.
The only way? How about if they overpower you in an expensive, drawn-out court battle.
Not only is the law stupid, but in the US the process to resist it is seriously flawed.
Books from Nolo are very valuable when you are defending yourself.
Take it as an opportunity to build a legal defense information system, then sell it and make a bundle off the experience you gain.
If there is a claim for damages or restitution or whatever, and you may be out of pocket if you lose, you need to weigh the cost of legal help versus the risk of losing.
I guess I'm skeptical that simply being right is enough to triumph in court against a determine company with a lot of money and little conscience.
If T-Mobile magenta shows up in a photograph or a painting, that is, of course, not a problem, but if it shows up in another corporate logo (the article specifically mentions Engadget Mobile), T-Mobile gets to sue and wins.