Purple Reign?

What's in a colour?

If you're chocolate maker Cadbury it's worth taking two of your rivals to court and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect it.

The confident confectioner sued Darrell Lea and Nestle for infringing its trademark colour on its packaging and signage.

In dispute was the purple of Nestle's Violet Crumble and the packaging, signage and uniforms of Darrell Lea. Cadbury even went so far as to ask for a share of Darrell Lea's profits for using the colour.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the case was thrown out of court this month by Justice Peter Heerey who agreed that trademarking purple was too broad a criteria.

While it is vital in business to have consistent branding and allow it to develop, where possible, into an iconic status (such as the curvacious Coke bottle), it is just as important to be specific.

It would appear that the trademarking body IP Australia doesn't require that level of specificity.

Although it matters little if you are registering a name in a specific typeface, in a specific colour and perhaps accompanied with a specific graphical element, it certainly does cause problems when the trademark being claimed is as loosely constituted as nominating a colour.

As anyone familiar with the printing process knows that not all colours are the same.

So what exactly is purple?

Is it this?

This?

Or this?

Without a specific PMS (Pantone Matching System) number or a CMYK breakdown, it is impossible to make that kind of claim successfully.

The true value of a brand is not its trademarkability but the level of goodwill, customer satisfaction, good corporate management and reputation it has in the market place.

All of which has to be earned, not bought.