A Monopoly On Color
from the such-big-business dept
I never realized that those random "color cards" you see when picking out paint was such a big business. Wired Magazine has an article discussing Pantone's monopoly on color, and describes them as being the "communications protocol" of color. Everyone, it seems, uses Pantone's color scheme to make sure that all their colors match. Out of this has come a new business of deciding which colors are "in", and helping clothing designers, store designers and anyone else figure out which color is right for them. This reminds me of the law publishing company that doesn't have the copyright on legal rulings - but does have it on the page numbers which everone uses to cite cases.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
And as the article mentioned, you can't get a patent on certain wavelength so colors are unpatentable. You just can't refer to it by the pantone color number.
Bottom line you can make anything any color you want--if you have a great need to match colors exactly, you pay Pantone a fee to use their numbering system. Big deal.
steve snyder
[ link to this | view in chronology ]