"This is mine, that is mine... ALL this is mine."

[denny]

As pointed out on IRC:
Royal Mail, the Royal Mail Cruciform, the colour red and SmartStamp are all registered trademarks of Royal Mail Group plc.

Does anything in there strike you as a tiny bit on the broad side, as trademarks go? :)

Comments

[zellah.livejournal.com]

*toddles off to trademark BLACK 'cos she is so goffik*

[ulorin-vex.livejournal.com]

my hair belongs to royal mail! nooooooooo!

[pooloftrees.livejournal.com]

Damn, and I so wanted to register Octarine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Discworld_concepts#Octarine)...

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

That actually seems reasonable to me. If you see a postbox, and it's red, the natural assumption (at least in my brain) is that it's a royal mail one.

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a non-royal-mail postbox in this country though so perhaps that could be down to lack of competition.

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. But that doesn't mean they don't own the trademark.

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

See below - pretty much certain it can't be a trademark in itself.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yessss, and yet, the phrasing is amusing.

Anyway, shouldn't they have to specify which red? I'm assuming it's only 'pillar box' red they're claiming - they should have a hex code there or something :)

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

Anyway, shouldn't they have to specify which red?

Nah, that'd be a really bad idea, as competitors could then just edge outside of that area and be A-ok (when in fact everyone might agree that they were infringing the royal mail's trademark). Much better to just say what they mean, which is "when someone sees a red postbox they think it's a royal mail one", and then let a judge sort it out.

Hopefully not a colourblind judge.

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty certain that a postbox couldn't be a trademark because it just isn't. There is a technical way of saying this. It isn't a graphical representation, it's a thing, and as such would have to be patented or copyrighted as a sculpture if they could claim it was original.

I think.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

A trademark applies to an area of business, or some such - I think the point here was that they only have 'red' trademarked when it's in the context of postal delivery services (or something along those lines).

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

You still can't trademark colours at the moment as they aren't capable of being graphically represented - a hex code isn't enough according to the courts!

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

You still can't trademark colours at the moment as they aren't capable of being graphically represented

This is an astonishing statement. How is anything easier to graphically represent than a colour?

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

Well because you can't distinguish it from something very similar. There's a very long and rambly judgement which I can dig out for you if you want to read it. There was a similar case for TMing the smell of a perfume where they decided that a chemical formual for the smell could not count as a graphical representation.

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but if you can't distinguish it from something very similar, surely it's a trademark infringement? Perfumes are different because the similarity of scents isn't immediately obvious from the similarity of chemical formulae - there's the intermediate olfactory step. On the other hand, similarity of colours is immediately obvious from just looking at the colour.

I'd be interested in seeing the judgement if you have time to look for it.

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

here (http://www.out-law.com/page-3533) and here (http://www.wuesthoff.de/pdf/wuesthoff_1081419374.pdf) have some pretty good details. What the court say is that Yes colours are potentially trademarkable - because they can't say no they're not because the law doesn't specifically exclude them - but then they give a series of conditions which if you read with the YSL perfume case - make it clear that realistically you coun't register a colour.

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

Thanks for digging those up.

Interestingly, my reading of them is different to yours: from the first link, The European Court of Justice decided this week that a colour can be registered as a trade mark, so long as it is described using an internationally recognised identification code, and from the second, Thus, the Court confirmed that on appearance of the attacked advertisements in March 1999, the plaintiff had already acquired the requisite secondary meaning for the colour magenta as a sign with regard to its goods and services in the field of telecommunications [that's a trademark, isn't it?], The Court...granted the motion only with regard to the advertisements.

That reads to me that to say that the court found that the company *already* had a trademark on a particular colour; that the court didn't want to make a ruling that would lead to a "turf war" over colour trademarks being frivolously registered, but agreed that the specific adverts had actually breached the trademark.

Thanks again for the links, interesting reading and jumping-off point.