Who owns brand colors?

It’s easy to pick a brand color, right? Not as easy as you think. Depending on your industry, the message and focus of your brand everything can change. The color, look and feel not only establishes what you are but who you are. This is why trade dress is so important. It’s happened several times that a brand comes into conflict with a competitor because of being too similar. Not only this, how you establish a color creates associations with bigger brands that have clout through subliminal recognition.

 

When brands are visually important, when they create thousands of impressions with consumers, this color is super-critical and many brands will fight for it with another competitor. Colors such as the Netflix red are simple but extremely important: it shows up on HDTVs, packaging, websites, smart phones, other people’s products and services (Roku’s for example). You want to channel that experience and have your brand found instantaneously. And, even more so, you’ll find certain brands want to be in certain spectrums. That association is critical for meaning and connection.

 

But according to a recent Wall Street Journal article (8/11/11) by Ray Smith and Ashby Jones, not all reds are protected. A U.S. federal judge stepped on Christian Louboutin SA’s red-soled shoes.

 

A recent ruling by Judge Victor Marrero denied Christian Louboutin’s request to halt sales of similar shoes made by Yves Saint Laurent, saying Louboutin would not likely be able to prove its use of the color deserved legal trademark protection.

As per Netflix, there’s an explosion in the use of red, especially in fashion. And, look at the non-profit movement RED which gives 50 percent of every purchase to global causes. It’s made the color red even hotter. But red, no matter how important to a brand, is not ownable in all forms. The trademark for Christian Louboutin protects this unique use of red on the sole of the shoe, at least in the use as cited by this court ruling against the fashion shoe designer.

 

The company won a trademark for red soles from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008 and filed suit against PPR SA’s YSL in federal court in Manhattan in 2011 but none of this affected the judge’s ruling.

 

“Because in the fashion industry color serves ornamental and aesthetic functions vital to robust competition, the court finds that Louboutin is unlikely to be able to prove that its red outsole brand is entitled to trademark protection,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

 

What do you think? Take a look at some colors and their associations with brands. You’ll see color spectrums and find some amazing color associations with brands we all know, many of which have trademark protection (see http://designtaxi.com/article/101664/Famous-Brands-Sorted-by-Color/).