I just got an email from UPS. The email was unimportant, but the disclaimer at the end was excellent:

 © 2008 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. UPS, the UPS brandmark, and the color brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

Really? UPS has a trademark on the color brown?

Dunno about the rest of the world but here in merry old europe that means that no other packet delivery service can use that specific shade of brown. How broad a range the trademark protects i don't know, perhaps that will be up to a judge when it actually comes to that.

However if you want to start a bakery with that shade of brown in your logo, no problem. Just as long as the logo doesn't resemble the UPS logo. You could even call your bakery UPS if you like, just as long as you don't start making packet deliveries.

In other words, a european trademark can be on anything that isn't in common use. But a trademark is confined to its own sector.

And there are a LOT of companies that have trademarked their colours.  

jjeff1:

Really? UPS has a trademark on the color brown?

Insofar as it relates to package shipping, yes. But it's not all browns, it's their brown. In the US, see Qualitex v. Jacobson Products.

stratos:

Dunno about the rest of the world but here in merry old europe that means that no other packet delivery service can use that specific shade of brown.

That's about how it works in the US, too.

 Caterpillar has similar protection for their yellow.

jjeff1:

 © 2008 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. UPS, the UPS brandmark, and the color brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

Really? UPS has a trademark on the color brown?

The same holds for the Deusche Post. I once coded an app for them and got the order to have it styled to match their corporate identity. Guess what the color code for their official yellow is? If you expect of something really fine-tuned, guess again! It's #ffcc00. As simple as that, and trademarked.

Incidentally, I later had to remove the yellow again, because the worker's council decided that staring at a yellow screen is too much strain for the eyes.. (no kidding)

taylonr:

 Caterpillar has similar protection for their yellow.

 

Communists have similar protection for the color red. 

Cadbury tried to sue Darrell Lea over the use of the colour purple, link. It doesn't seem to difficult to expect that UPS would try to protect their colour brown.

 I belive that you can be punished in America if you have your car painted School Bus Yellow.

Jedaz:

I belive that you can be punished in America if you have your car painted School Bus Yellow.

That's a silly thing to believe, considering it's not even remotely true.

bstorer:

Jedaz:

I belive that you can be punished in America if you have your car painted School Bus Yellow.

That's a silly thing to believe, considering it's not even remotely true.

Actually in many states (not Virginia) it is illegal for anything other than a school bus to be painted "National School Bus Yellow".  However, this is for safety reasons and has nothing to do with trademarks.

morbiuswilters:

bstorer:

Jedaz:

I belive that you can be punished in America if you have your car painted School Bus Yellow.

That's a silly thing to believe, considering it's not even remotely true.

Actually in many states (not Virginia) it is illegal for anything other than a school bus to be painted "National School Bus Yellow".  However, this is for safety reasons and has nothing to do with trademarks.

Hmmm, you're right. I checked the federal statutes and saw nothing. I didn't consider checking a backwards state like Illinois.

bstorer:

I didn't consider checking a backwards state like Illinois.

Virginia is like the Hungary of America.  They probably don't even care if school busses get turned into flaming rubble.  Well, at least all the children on the bus will be armed with assault rifles so we know they will be able to defend themselves against terrorists hijacking the bus.

morbiuswilters:

bstorer:

I didn't consider checking a backwards state like Illinois.

Virginia is like the Hungary of America.  They probably don't even care if school busses get turned into flaming rubble.  Well, at least all the children on the bus will be armed with assault rifles so we know they will be able to defend themselves against terrorists hijacking the bus.

Better the Hungary of America than the Slovenia of America, like Illinois. Also, you forgot to mention that all of our buses have "NO QUEERS ALOWED" [sic] painted on them. Hey, you might know: are the buses in Massachusetts rainbow colored, or do they just go with bare metal because it's more eco-friendly?

TheDude:

Communists have similar protection for the color red. 

 

 In Soviet Russia, the color red protects you!

 

jjeff1:

Really? UPS has a trademark on the color brown?

 

It's actually "Pullman Brown."  The color was originally licsenced from the Pullman Coach? Company when UPS was still a start-up.

Corporate legend has it the during that time, the brown on the Pullman train coaches inspired a sense of reliability. Hence those

god-awful brown trucks.

Jedaz:

Cadbury tried to sue Darrell Lea over the use of the colour purple, link. It doesn't seem to difficult to expect that UPS would try to protect their colour brown.

 

I was going to post that one too ;)
Cadbury's purple is RGB 3b0084 in hexadecimal if you care ;)

jjeff1:

Really? UPS has a trademark on the color brown?

 

http://www.google.at/search?q=t-mobile+magenta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 T-Mobile did the same with magenta (RAL 4010) (at least in Europe) ... 

 

And Nazis also reserved their tone of brown for themselves.

In Germany taxis used to have a tone of beige which was also kind of reserved for them. Don't know if this was forbidden for non-taxi cars but at least not many people wanted their car painted in beige.

morbiuswilters:

Actually in many states (not Virginia) it is illegal for anything other than a school bus to be painted "National School Bus Yellow".  However, this is for safety reasons and has nothing to do with trademarks.

I'll bite. What possible safety reason could there be for this?

Random832:

morbiuswilters:

Actually in many states (not Virginia) it is illegal for anything other than a school bus to be painted "National School Bus Yellow".  However, this is for safety reasons and has nothing to do with trademarks.

I'll bite. What possible safety reason could there be for this?

I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe to avoid people painting their own vehicles school bus yellow and trying to pick up children? I really don't know. It seems a stupid, stupid law to me. The sort you see in third-world states like Illinois.

Random832:

I'll bite. What possible safety reason could there be for this?

 

Uh, perhaps not allowing people to drive around in psuedo school busses?

bstorer:

The sort you see in third-world states like Illinois.

 

Well, to be fair, there are a lot of pedophiles driving around in school busses in Illinois trying to pick up children. Someone had to do something!

bstorer:

I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe to avoid people painting their own vehicles school bus yellow and trying to pick up children?

Because children are so much more likely to realize something is amiss based on the exact shade of yellow than, you know, the fact that it's not a bus. I'd actually assumed the purported reason was so people driving cars would know it's a school bus (rather than, you know, the fact that you only have to treat school buses differently on the road when they've got their red lights flashing, and if you're close enough to identify the exact shade you ought to damn well be able to tell from the shape that it's a school bus.)

Random832:

exact shade of yellow than

 

It has nothing to do with the exact shade of yellow.

You cannot have a bus that looks like a school bus, and you cannot have a car that looks like a police car.

Why is that hard to understand?