In summary, you cannot copyright a colour as such. However, copyright, design rights and trade marks are relevant if you seek to protect a certain amount of monopoly control over a colour.
1. Tiffany Blue. Tiffany Blue has been a registered trademark since 1998. The Pantone color is officially titled 1837 Blue which commemorates the company's founding year.
Since 1998, Tiffany Blue® has been registered as a color trademark by Tiffany and, in 2001, was standardized as a custom color created by Pantone® exclusively for Tiffany and not publicly available. No matter the medium the color is reproduced in, Tiffany's proprietary hue remains consistent and instantly recognizable.
It is legally protected, so don't go attempting to use Pantone 159 for your business. It has, in the last 50 years, become a classic. And isn't there something, for lack of a better word, Texas-y about burnt orange?
The registered mark protects the brand image – not the color or color combination. In other words, the same yellow and red colors as McDonald's can be used in one's business. However one will be in trouble if one used the same design with their business name.
Tiffany & Co.'s blue color has been trademarked since 1998. Its custom Pantone number, 1837, is the year the company was founded. Business Insider has shared a list of seven colors that are trademarked by their respective companies. Usage of these colors within the same industry could land you in hot water.
BARBIE PINK
Another protected shade of pink: Barbie Pink. It's trademarked for use in more than 100 categories, from bubble bath to cereal.
Purple. "The color PURPLE is a trademark of 3M," reads a 3M box, BoingBoing reported in 2010. And while the trademark is real, you can still go ahead and legally paint your room purple; 3M can't sue because you aren't trade competitors.
Everything created by official parties for the Red vs. Blue series are registered trademarks of Rooster Teeth and its associates.
Coke's official colors are red and white. The red color is not trademarked because it's not a specific Pantone color. It is actually a blend of three reds. The scripted Coca-Cola logo is trademarked, however, and so is the design of a white logo against a red background.
The 1995 trademark was only registered for “chocolate in bar or tablet form,” so in 2004 Cadbury applied for a new trademark to ensure its drinking chocolates, broader chocolate range and cakes could also monopolise legally on its trademark purple.
As long as the general public can associate that particular color with a specific product, the color can no longer be used by similar products or brands. This 'Think Pink" case is a good example of a color being protected by a trademark.
Hermès – which maintains trademark registrations for the orange hue of its product packaging in other countries, including in the United States and in France – may now opt to appeal to the IP High Court in Japan.
In the United States, the United States Court of Appeals ruled in 1985 that Owens Corning had the right to prevent competitors from using the colour pink in their insulation products, thus making Owens Corning the first company in the United States to trademark a colour.
Colors by themselves aren't protected by copyright. An arrangement of colors, for example, in painting is protected by copyright, and such copyright belongs to the creator of the painting.
The Color Purple by Allice Walker has been banned in schools across the United States sine 1984, just two years after the book was published. The book was banned for its sexual content and situations of abuse and domestic violence.
Cadbury's Purple Reign: High Court Allows Cadbury to Register Their Iconic Purple Colouring – IP Law Watch.
It took Megan Thee Stallion 2+ years of wrangling with the USPTO, but she is now the owner of a federal trademark registration for HOT GIRL SUMMER.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln owns the trademarks to terms such as “Husker,” “NU,” “Big Red” and even the word “Nebraska.”
Starbucks' green circle mark - Chiever. US coffee giant Starbucks has further strengthened the protection of its house style in the US after the United States Patent and Trademark Office accepted the registration of its green circle mark on a white coffee cup as a trademark.
Pink has long been associated with the Barbie brand — she even has her own Pantone color.
While pink has been used as the predominant colour in the packaging of Barbie dolls since the 1970s (some 11 years after the toy's launch in 1959), maker Mattel doesn't possess trademark registrations for hues on their own.
Ford Motor Company has filed to trademark Ford Blue with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Ford Authority has learned.