^^^
Colour palettes are collections of facts. Facts don’t have copyright protection and ability to claim copyright for a collection is pretty tenuous. However, copyright may apply to certain related things.
For example: Suppose you see that someone is selling a Photoshop colour palette for money, and included the entire palette in the store image. In that case, there’s literally nothing, legally speaking, stopping someone from prodding the image with a colour picker a bunch of times. But there would be copyright protection for the Photoshop palette file itself, because that’s a more tangible piece of data.
There are also other kinds of intellectual property laws that apply to colours. Pantone gets away with whatever shenanigans they’re doing because of trademarks.
Designer here - this above comment is 100% correct. The nuance is important that if a particular color palette is used in an original and distinguishable artwork that can be subject to copyright, although it’s a gray area. Colors can be trademarked however and that’s done all the time; for example McDs Red and yellow, UPS brown, The yellow of 3Ms stickies, DHLs red and yellow are examples. Those colors are only contestable if you use them on a similar product. You can color your dog house UPS brown without issue, but you wouldn’t get away with (for long) creating a delivery company with vans that color brown.
This podcast episode discusses this very question at length, along with a history of Pantone’s pallette
In Germany at least it’s not copyright but a thing called “taste patent”. As far as I know it can cover colors, shapes and probably literal taste as well. But it’s not automatic like copyright. It’s more similar to trademarks.
Its Trademark Law in Australia.
For example Cadbury has a trademark protecting its purple (defined as pantone 2685C) from competitors in the chocolate industry. On the other hand Whiskas has one protecting its purple (defined as CMYK {40% C, 100% M) from competitors in the cat food industry.
Because its trademark law both only cover their specific industries (so purple would be fair game for a business in another field), but despite the precise definitions used for the colours they would be able to argue that a competitor using a similar purple could cause confusion in consumers, (so they effectively block out an area of the color spectrum).
I.e. Deutsche Telekom tried to stop other companies from using magenta. However, the court ruled that DT can’t hold a patent on magenta as a whole, only their specific hue.
Ritter Sport is a sweets’ manufacturer famous for their square chocolate bars.
Generally no, but I wouldn’t rule out that it might be possible in a limited way in very specific circumstances. You wouldn’t be able to stop others from using certain colors.
A specific color scheme might also be used as a trademark.
I don’t think you can copyright a color, per se. You can trademark certain uses of color in certain schemes. For example, the walmart smiley is trademarked, but they can’t go after people just using a yellow smiley. or like, Checker Cabs, with their yellow and black livery. (as mentioned elsewhere, the pantone colorset is trademarked.
Further, you can get patents for pigments- specifically, their production methods, and how they get bound into a solvent or whatever. For an example here- Vanta Black. If someone were to get their hands on some second hand, the people that make it can’t stop them from using it, but they could go after another company producing it the same way they do.
Copyright protections are for works of art (or other works, eh.), and while there are plenty of monochrome works, part of what makes “art” … “art” is composition. For example, in the sampling of monochrome, that first one is a blue panel set inside a white frame. Others, you see the single color is composed of texture. (the Yves Klien painting, for example.) Or, like Gerhard Ricther’s solid gray which was expressly intended to convey… nothing (A lack of emotion or feeling, etc.)
But all of these are more than just the color they’re painted in.
There are only 16777216 colors people care about. There are way more people than that in the world. We could live in a colorless society if 0.2% of humans decided to steal all colors
I call dibs on green©
I believe trademark would be the proper area for something like this. I don’t believe it would be enforceable, but could be weaponized to bleed someone of money via court. Not a lawyer.
Anish has entered the chat
Doesn’t he have a bean to flick?
Shit, i would own a whole lot to Mr Viridis
