I was just cleaning up my writing table, fighting off various ancient papers, pens, and scribblings (among notebooks, books, and other random items, such as one of those wooden posable artist figures). Under a pile of papers I found an unopened pack of Post-It notes. In putting them away, I noticed something on the back of the packaging that I found kind of interesting:
“Post-it” and the and the color canary yellow are trademarks of 3M.
Heh. So does that mean you have to be careful about using the color ‘canary yellow’? And for that matter, how do you trademark a color? Aren’t colors totally subjective? What I call purple someone else calls lavender, right?
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September 27, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Jay
Apparently UPS has a trademark on the colour brown… or at least the word “brown”. I didn’t know that about canary yellow though, I work in a college printshop and I use that colour everyday… am I breaking any laws!? lol
September 27, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Josh
Yeah, I’m not sure how that work. I don’t really get how you can trademark a color (or word for that matter).
I can see where you could trademark a made-up word, such as FedEx or Microsoft, but the word brown? I think I’ll trademark the word ‘am’. No one is allowed to use the word anymore.
It should make the English language become extremely interesting (more so than it already is!)