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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 gtomorrow on Monday August 28 2017, @05:42PM

    by gtomorrow (2230) on Monday August 28 2017, @05:42PM (#560346)

    "Some kind of red" is as close as I can come to magenta.

    Congratulations! You perceive colors slightly better than your average dog. :'D

    But seriously, in your defense, I'm sure you can see AND discern all the 16M+ colors in the visible-to-humans spectrum. Maybe the problem is verbalizing the differences between, say, tomato red and apple red, or possibly giving that difference any importance. I'm pretty sure that at your work, you say you use a certain yellow "caution" paint. I'm betting (in your favor) that if perchance one day a batch of that paint comes in with a slight variance, you'd pick it off immediately.

    Next...

    I guess what I'm asking is, whether colors have real meaning to most people, in regards to branding. To me, it's all pretty meaningless. Why would I even WANT to stake a claim to a color?

    Tell that to Coca-Cola, Ferrari, or Marlboro.