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.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @06:40PM (1 child)
Mandarin oranges may have an etymology in location as well, though it looks like it's tough to know for sure due to their age. Another thing even more damning on champagne is that Champagne, France did not [wikipedia.org] even invent it. It was invented and the recipe/process widely shared and published by an English scientist hundreds of years before Champagne made their first bottle. And thanks to their trademark they've forced a village in Champagne, Switzerland to change the name of their local wine which they've been selling as Champagne since the 1600s - hundreds years before Champagne made their first bottle of champagne. It's all just so incredibly silly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 28 2017, @11:49PM
Nobody said that the French were Nice people (well, there is that town on the med coast, but they're almost as stuck up there as the Parisians.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]