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General Mills Loses Bid To Trademark Yellow Color On Cheerios Box (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: U.S. intellectual property regulators are rejecting General Mills' bid to trademark the yellow background color on boxes of Cheerios cereal. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board on Tuesday set aside the cereal maker's two-year quest to trademark "the color yellow appearing as the predominant uniform background color" on boxes of "oat-based breakfast cereal." A contrary ruling could have given the Cheerios maker an exclusive right to yellow boxes of oat cereal. 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.
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.
I'd be shocked to find that most people who regularly ate Cheerio's realized its made from oats.
So I assume they'd have to describe it by the hex code or 3x 8-bit integer RGB code (same thing) so just change 231 to 230 on red for example and tada, now it's not their color. Like it's legally proveably not their color even though visually it'd be virtually indistinguishable. They were idiots for even trying.
http://www.thecondongroup.com....
Though, if I had to say, I think that purple is a LOT more distinct than the Cheerio's yellow.
When 'Liking' a Brand Online Voids the Right to Sue — 16 April 2014
It's not the first time we've been taxed unreasonably for touching a toe to the yellow brick road, Dorothy.
General Mills Kansas City flour plant likely behind E. coli outbreak — 1 June 2016
Though for our own safety, we really have to stop meeting like this.
It's literally just a yellow box with a bowl of cheerios on it. The color itself isn't what the consumers look for when getting cheerios, but the box that has "cheerios" written on it.
Beside, everyone knows the only cheerios worth eating are the Honey Nuts kind, which is more of a brown/orange box.
It's funny, I really do associate the yellow box with Cheerios, it really is a distinctive feature of the brand. Furthermore, there are items on that list that I associate less with their trademarked colors then I do with Cheerios. Especially T-mobile magenta.
On the other hand, I feel like trademarking a color is bullshit.
My thirty seconds reading the article elicited a complex range of opinions that are sure to disappear 5 minutes after I've posted this
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Not sure you guys have this in the U.S.A. but up here we have this brand called "NO NAME" and all their packages are yellow.
#DeleteFacebook
I am more likely to associate the John Deere colors with the Oregon Ducks, before I think of John Deere.
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Yellow is NOT the primary background color on most of their boxes...
Their primary background colors include brown, orange, blue, green, pink, purple, and red.
It's no wonder they weren't granted a trademark for yellow.
We have a trademark battle going on in NZ - Santarium makes "Weet-bix" and there's another brand of a similar product made buy a different company in the UK called "Weeta-bix". Fundamentally the product is pretty much the same, but the boxes and branding are quite different. Santarium is going after the importer because they think that consumer here are so dumb that they cannot tell the difference.
IMHO, Sanitarium are just being assholes about it and flexing corporate muscle http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/weetabix-shipment-to-new-zealand-blocked-by-sanitarium/news-story/696f98f783e98c2c6083be43245ae348
I am more than mildly color blind and I'll have to take your word as to the color of a box of cheerios, most things look what I've grown to call grey. I say grey because that is what someone told me was grey when I was in grade school long ago.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Why don't the courts ever give big corporations a break? They're people too, you know. /s
you sound bitter, butter tits
Didn't Apple try to trademark rounded corners? Thus if you made a yellow box with rounded corners, you'd get sued by two conglomerates. Put one button on it and Amazon would also join the party.
Table-ized A.I.
I wanted to post a very good comment but then I realized that it's was not about general milfs.
"Consumers are confronted with a multitude of yellow boxes of oats cereal, the appeal board noted."
Yeah, but they call them all "cheerios". That's not the case with, say, T-Mobile vs competitors.
Barbie pink is not a Pantone color and can't be produced exactly on a CMYK printer. The color is a custom layer on the packaging. So that's one way to protect yourself albeit an expensive one.
What can I say, it was definitely something worth trying. The possible reward would have been the ability to spot all competitors from placing their cereals in yellow boxes. The risk was losing a couple of thousand dollars in USPTO fees and legal representation. The best part for General Mills is that they didn't lose their main brand. All they did is they happened to broaden their trademark portfolio by adding another trademark application. It didn't go through. But all their other brands are still intact
Andrei Mincov
Founder and CEO of Trademark Factory® / https://trademarkfactory.com, the only firm in the world that offers trademarking services with a predictable, guaranteed result, for a predictable, guaranteed budget. We can help you register your trademarks with a free comprehensive trademark search, for a single all-inclusive flat fee, with a 100% money-back guarantee.