CompuServe Messages

John, They said the "color" can be trademarked. Its a very complex issue and the courts have decided on a variety of issues, some of which are very contradictory. For instance Owens Corning won it suit regarding the use of pink as the color for their insulation. On the other hand Nutrasweet lost its bid to monopolize pastel blue for its sugar substitutes. The focus of this debate is narrowing which is why its becoming important. The Supreme Court is hearing a case brought by a company called Qualitex which has used a greenish shade of gold for thier pressing machine pads. The owner of the company seems to think that it is a special color in that is aesthetically pleasing and they have been using it for over 40 years. A competitor was challenged because he used the same color even though his boxes and marketing etc. were totally different. The lawyer for the company defending their position said, "There is a fine difference between 'knocking off' "the look of a competitor's product, which is legal, and passing off' which is illegal". But because they had used the "same color" on their pressing pads the defendant lost and was in held in "violation" of federal law against "unfair competition". The federal appeals court based in San Francisco agreed that the defendant was in the wrong but also said that Qualitex's trademark should be canceled. Congress in 1946 passed a major intellectual-property law known as the Lehman act, which notably lacks any prohibition on trademarks for color alone. In 1988, a Senate report accompanying trademark-law revisions specifically stated that the changes did not preclude "registration of colors, shapes, sounds or configurations". So its become a Supreme Court issue with the Qualitex case. Precedence in the case of Owens Corning is very strong along with the revisions passed by the Senate in '88. The WSJ is a really good paper BTW, excellent coverage on a broad variety of topics.