In today’s competitive consumer market the way a company or business
identifies itself is crucial to the brand’s survival and one very
important aspect of an identity is simply color.
Color is so important as a brand attribute that companies have engaged
in legal battles in an effort to claim ownership of a particular color
or color set. It is understandable that if a company has used a
particular color as its main source of branding in a specific industry
and a competitor uses color in a way that seems to take advantage of
that success in the same market that they would see it as unfair.
But should a business be allowed to trademark a color or color set?
This is often a topic of heated discussion that leads to questions such
as:
“Does that mean that at some point we will run out of colors that we
can legally use for a particular type of business?”
“Will we exhaust the supply of “attractive, usable” colors within
each competing industry?”
” I mean can someone really own a color?”
It makes me think back to when I was about five years old and my
favorite pastime was coloring. I would sit down at the kitchen table,
place my “Rainbow Brite” coloring book in front of me and open a
massive three-tiered box of Crayola crayons.
I would search for my favorite color crayon, “Sea Blue” and after what
seemed like hours of rummaging I would hear a squeal, look up and see
my younger sister gleefully scribbling on some paper, using MY COLOR!
Although simplistic, you can probably relate to that type of
aggravation and understand the frustration of these multi-million
dollar companies filing color trademark lawsuits. They just want their
crayon back.
Can you identify these companies by their color scheme?
Answers: 1) UPS 2) DHL 3) FedEx 4) at&t 5) T Mobile 6) Verizon 
