Intellectual Property and Open Movements (IP&OM)

Issues and developments related to Intellectual Property (e.g. Copyright, Fair Use, Patents, Trademarks, Trade Secrets) and Open Movements (e.g. Open Access, Open Data, Open Educational Resources (OER)), examined in the "Intellectual Property and Open Movements" and "Ethics of Data, Information, and Emerging Technologies" graduate courses I teach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information. -- Kip Currier, PhD, JD

Showing posts with label General Mills. Show all posts

Friday, August 25, 2017

You can’t trademark yellow, Cheerios; , August 25, 2017

Cody Nelson, Minnesota Public Radio; You can’t trademark yellow, Cheerios

"The Cheerios’ shade of yellow isn’t “inherently distinctive” enough to qualify for a trademark, the federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled this week.

General Mills had spent the past two years trying to trademark “the color yellow appearing as the predominant uniform background color” on Cheerios boxes, Ars Technica reports.

Turns out the Cheerios yellow is just too average. For intellectual-property regulators to deem a color trademark-able, consumers must consider it to have a certain “distinctiveness.”"