3M Owns the Color Purple (But Not How You may Think) [Imagecache]

And here I was, able to paint my bedroom purple. But if 3M owns it , I will’t, right? Wrong! Although under US law 3M strangely does have a claim to the the color, it’s not as bad as it sounds.

Intellectual property law makes it possible for what’s called ” trade dress” -the visual distinctiveness that, the hope is, allows consumers to tell apart between similar products on the foundation of their origin. That implies you’ll walk into the supermarket and see a red Coca Cola based on its red-ness-and know you’re unlikely to open the can and have a swarm of killer bees fly into your mouth. Or, y’know, some weird inferior brand of soda. So a rival soda maker can’t make bottles of an analogous hue, hoping to piggyback on Coke’s visual reputation.

Coke owns, to a undeniable extent, that color. It’s a wacky idea-having even partial ownership over the best way light reflects off a surface and hits our eyes-but don’t worry, nobody actually owns the color. Within the case above, 3M could only stop you from selling a competing product dressed up within the same purple packaging. Apart from that, purple is yours to love and own. Go ahead, buy those purple pants-no legal goons will come knocking. [via Boing Boing ]

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This post is tagged: distinctiveness, intellectual property law, purple pants, similar products, supermarket