Color marks

Color marks
High registration hurdles
Distinctiveness
Need to keep free
Uniqueness
Distinction from other types of trademarks
Examples of color marks
Other types of trademarks
Cost of a color mark

Select Your Preferred Appointment Now:Free initial consultation

Color Marks

Color marks are trademarks that consist exclusively of one or more (contourless) colors. A colored shape, e.g. a blue square, would however be a figurative mark.

Select Your Preferred Appointment Now:Free initial consultation

High Registration Hurdles

The registration of a color mark faces high hurdles due to the general public’s great interest in the continued possible free use of colors. The registration of a color mark is only possible in narrowly limited exceptional cases.

Distinctiveness

Colors are used extensively in advertising and in the marketing of goods and services. No wonder. Colors are excellently suited to convey certain mental connections and evoke feelings in advertising. However, mere colors can hardly convey clear information about the operational origin of a product. Mere colors therefore generally have no distinctive character in the sense of trademark law.

Exceptions prove the rule. Again and again, manufacturers succeed in linking their goods and services so closely with a specific color through focusing on a special color, long market presence and corresponding advertising pressure that the mere sight of the color triggers a mental connection to the manufacturer. In these cases, the color already has the necessary trademark distinctiveness due to its acquired distinctiveness.

Acquired distinctiveness exists if a color or a color combination has become established within the relevant public as a sign for a company or a specific product. This is the case, for example, when the essential part of consumers of chocolate think of Milka when they see a certain shade of purple.

Color marks can therefore generally only be registered if there is acquired distinctiveness and only in a very narrowly defined goods and services segment.

Select Your Preferred Appointment Now:Free initial consultation

Need to Keep Free

Further aspects must be taken into account when considering the registrability of color marks. For example, the registration of established warning and signal colors in the transport sector is hardly conceivable, as these colors must remain open to all legitimate forms of use. Likewise, everyday colors such as white, black and shades of gray are less likely to be candidates for color marks, unless the use of these colors for the registered goods and services would be maximally unusual.

Uniqueness

For a clear representation of the color mark, color codes from established color systems such as RAL or Pantone must be specified. If a color mark consists of more than one color, it must be precisely defined how the colors relate to each other. The indication “approx. 50 % : 50 %” would already be too vague.

Distinction from other Types of Trademarks

The color mark is closely related to other types of trademarks.

If the registered color is not contourless, i.e. colored shapes are registered, then a figurative mark must be registered for two-dimensional shapes, and a shape mark (3D mark) for three-dimensional shapes.