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posted by cmn32480 on Monday August 28 2017, @03:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the potty-training-targets dept.

From ArsTechnica

General Mills argued that it deserved to be awarded the trademark status because "consumers have come to identify the color yellow" on boxes of oats cereal with "the Cheerios brand." It has been marketed in yellow packaging since 1945, with billions in sales.

The board noted that "there is no doubt that a single color applied to a product or its packaging may function as a trademark and be entitled to registration under the Trademark Act." But that's only if those colors have become "inherently distinctive" in the eyes of consumers. Some of those examples include UPS "Brown;" T-Mobile "Magenta;" Target "Red;" John Deere "Green & Yellow;" and Home Depot "Orange." It goes without saying that anybody can still use those colors predominately in their marketing, but not direct competitors.

Regarding the box of Cheerios, however, the court ruled that consumers don't necessarily associate the yellow box of cereal with Cheerios, despite General Mills' assertion to the contrary. Consumers are confronted with a multitude of yellow boxes of oats cereal, the appeal board noted. By comparison, T-Mobile has only a handful of competitors, and none of them uses the magenta color as a distinctive mark, the appeal board said.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 28 2017, @03:51AM (2 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday August 28 2017, @03:51AM (#560044) Homepage

    Now this is a problem all professional operators of 3-D printers know about: a hermetically-sealed temperature-controlled environment.

    I now work for a company in which rapid-prototyping is key. The problem we have is that some filthy cocksucker patented having a temperature-controlled environment within 3-D printing. This is critical if you don't want jobs to curl upwards like potato chips. But unfortunately we cannot mitigate that concern without paying royalties. We can't even roll our own solution without the risk of being sued.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 28 2017, @11:33AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 28 2017, @11:33AM (#560162)

    Or, you can creatively skirt the patent:

    http://www.flashforge-usa.com/shop/index.php [flashforge-usa.com]

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 28 2017, @11:46PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday August 28 2017, @11:46PM (#560588)

    If your "roll your own" temperature controlled 3D printer solution is only used in-house, that should be protectable as a trade secret (aka not legally discoverable) - or, do your lawyers lack balls?

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]