Seeing red
We came across this while wandering the web, and thought that (while it’s not core to the Free Our Data campaign) that it still carried some interesting implications…
Seeing red: “Having just looked at an old postage certificate I had got a couple of weeks ago and no longer needed, I was shocked to find that the Royal Mail asserts that:
Royal Mail, the Cruciform and the colour red are registered Trade Marks of Royal Mail Group plc.
The colour red? Like, any colour red? Or just the red that pillarboxes come in? Is that why Arsenal changed their strip this season? What about yellow or magenta – can I use them, even though they contain the colour red? What if I were colourblind and inadvertently used it? Would that be wrong?
You have to agree, it’s an interesting question. Is the red in question a specific Pantone combination, or some other sort of “red”.
(Via qwghlm.co.uk.)
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April 7th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
The company that makes Styrofoam (a trademark in itself) has a trademark on the colour blue. I think the trademark only applies in the context of expanded foam products though. See http://www.dow.com/styrofoam . I assume this is the same kind of concept – perhaps non-Royal-Mail post boxes can’t be red?
April 7th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
There was the issue of orange (the colour) being used in relation to telephones by Easymobile that Orange (the company) objected to.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4281845.stm
I hope it is just the colour associations that are trademarked, rather than the colours as a whole.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Any Trade Mark is granted in relation to a particular “class� of good or services.
It really is staggering some of the things that can be legitimately trademarked these days, the shape of a plastic bottle, the colour combination of a particular tablet. There have even been attempted to Trade Mark smells! Great stuff for those Trade Mark Attorneys! For further info about Trade Marks see http://www.patent.gov.uk