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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
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday August 28 2017, @10:40AM (8 children)
What the heck does gender have to do with this? Are you fishing for a particular response by throwing this in? :)
When I am in the cereal aisle, I see a pretty even mix of genders.
To me, the idea that color can be trademarked seems overbroad since it is aesthetic (the same problem applies to trademarks on "form factor" such as with gopro). But, I also dislike trademarks which are descriptive of the product, since descriptive marks are often used to trick the consumer into thinking it is describing a fact. Both seem like a case where "whoever snaps it up first" gets a big advantage, and trademarks should not be like that. Also with both types of marks, a situation can arise where all the good descriptive words for a thing or all the attractive colors for the target audience are already taken. This hurts the consumer by making it harder to fairly compete in a crowded market.
All trademarks should be abstract and merely serve as an identifier to the consumer as to the origin of the product.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 28 2017, @12:08PM (4 children)
Gender is relevant. Color vision. One out of every four men is at LEAST a little bit color blind. You'll search a long time to find a woman who has any trace of color vision. It's gender linked. Obviously, you're not familiar with all of that crap - MOST men have a color deficiency in either the red or the green spectrum. Some few of us are deficient in BOTH red and green.
If you are EVER in doubt about a color, ask a woman. The chances a woman being unsure are very, very, very slim.
And, no need to thank me. I enjoy triggering people early in the morning!!
This lady's numbers are somewhat different than I learned, but I'll throw her article out there for you anyway - https://www.news-medical.net/health/Color-Blindness-Prevalence.aspx [news-medical.net]
Some more numbers, and related links from this page - http://www.colour-blindness.com/general/prevalence/ [colour-blindness.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 28 2017, @12:13PM
Ehhh, let me correct my error before someone else does.
"You'll search a long time to find a woman who has any trace of color deficiency."
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday August 28 2017, @12:14PM (2 children)
I am aware of colorblindness but it doesn't seem relevant to this discussion. The way I see it, a colorblind person will always see "Cheerios yellow" as the same color. It doesn't matter if to them it is some different color than what I see.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 28 2017, @01:07PM
Some explanation is in order, it seems. You say that this particular shade of yellow will always look the same to me - and - I can't argue that. It can't look any different, one day to the next. No, I'm not blue or yellow color blind, so that yellow should always stand out. Except, it doesn't, exactly. Lighting, decor, the colors of things in the vicinity of the Cheerios box, all have an effect on what I percieve. Put up some Christmas decorations, and that Cheerios yellow will stand out plainly. Go with Halloween decorations, and Cheerios begins to fade. Put the cereal aisle near the front or side of the store with windows, I'll see the yellow right away. In another store, with dingy flourescent lighting far from the storefront, that box looks quite different.
And, we're back to my original post, really. I can't explain my world of color to you, and I don't suppose anyone is going to explain how many colors they can readily identify to me.
This is one reason that I dislike "warm" lighting, and prefer "daylight" over any other color/temperature of lighting. I can see a lot more color in daylight, than in any other lighting. Or course, even then, I can't see much more than a fraction of reds and greens.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:42PM
There's more to it than just colorblindness. Look up "tetrachromacy" -- most people have three cone cells used to detect colors, but some appear to have four, which may allow them to see more color variation than the rest of us. When I read about this previously it was said that it was only possible in women, although Wikipedia does mention that some studies now show a very small fraction of men may have it as well:
http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision [discovermagazine.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zinho on Monday August 28 2017, @02:14PM (2 children)
Obligatory XKCD link. [xkcd.com]
Funny thing is, the XKCD color survey kinda shows that women think of colors mostly in the same terms as men - by which I mean words used to describe them.
I think the "women especially" stereotype comes from the fact that many more words are used to market colors to women than are used to market colors to men. You're much more likely to see a green article described as "lime", "clover", or "seafoam" when being sold to a woman than when sold to a man. There's probably a bunch of psychology associated with this, boiling down to "men don't care" and "women respond to it".
It's possible that trademark law starts creeping in here, as it's probably easier to get trademark protection on a lipstick formula when it's marketed as "Maybelline (R) Sweet Maraschino (TM) Lipstick". Also, with 50 different red lipsticks the vendor has to do something to differentiate products in their own line. The irony for me is that among the women I know the go-to technique for finding their preferred color again isn't to look for the fancy color name; instead, they remember the brand and the associated number (which was probably assigned serially by order of formulation, they don't group nicely by color when sorted by number). The marketers would probably do just as well to have a gamut of nice colors with easy to read numbers as the product name.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cmdrklarg on Monday August 28 2017, @07:23PM
Back in college I was taking a German language class. During an in-class exercise the instructor pointed at this girl's sweater and asked her (in German) "What color is your sweater?" The expected answer was "rot" (red).
She then proceeded to hem and haw, "Well, it's kind of a crimson..."
The instructor's exasperated rant was just priceless.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 28 2017, @11:28PM
"Some were obviously using scripts; based on the filter’s certainty, the #1 spammer in the database was someone who named 2,400 colors—all with the same racial slur."
So, our own Ethanol Fueled participated in the survey? Interesting. Thanks for the link, I've never seen that one!