Colour Trademark Register

What it actually means to trademark a colour

In several legal systems a colour can function as a trade mark. It is rarely straightforward. Whether it does usually turns on the jurisdiction, the goods or services concerned, whether the colour has come to identify one source in consumers' minds, how precisely the mark was described when filed, and whether the colour does a job other than identifying — hiding dirt, absorbing heat, signalling a flavour — that competitors would be disadvantaged by losing.

Three things get run together in popular coverage and are worth separating:

• Registration — an office accepted a mark onto a register, for stated goods or services.
• Ownership — a loose word that rarely matches the legal position. Nobody owns a colour at large.
• Enforcement — a court restrained a particular use by a particular party. That can succeed where registration failed, and fail where registration succeeded.

This register keeps them apart, because the records do.

The register

18 records, drawn from a Colour Memory archive of 495 colour trademark entries. Each page shows the colour, what the record documents, its named source, the evidence grade, and what the record does not establish. This is a pilot: it is a deliberately small, hand-checked selection chosen to cover different jurisdictions and outcomes, not a complete survey.

By jurisdiction

By outcome

When courts disagree about colour

A general article on trademarked colours will tell you India does not permit single-colour marks. The record is less tidy than that. Two benches of the Delhi High Court reached opposite conclusions about the same red sole within roughly five months, and both judgments remain on the books.

Colour Memory stores both rather than picking the one that makes a cleaner sentence. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is the finding. No reconciliation is offered here, because the sources do not provide one.

How this register treats evidence

Every record carries a source and a grade from A to E, where A is a direct institutional record such as a judgment or a registration and C is a named secondary source such as trade-press case reporting. The grade is shown on every page.

Colours are shown as swatches, and every swatch is an editorial estimate held in the archive, not a specification lifted from a registration. No colour in this register was measured from a registered sample. Where the archive holds a three-way split between what is documented, what is inferred and what is interpretation, the page shows all three. Where it does not, the page says so rather than reconstructing one.

Records rated low confidence are published with that rating visible. An honestly-flagged partial record is more useful than a confident-sounding one.

Frequently asked

Can you trademark a colour?

In some jurisdictions, yes, subject to conditions. The United States has permitted it since the Supreme Court's 1995 decision in Qualitex, where the test is acquired secondary meaning and absence of functionality. The European position was set by Libertel, requiring clear and precise representation and distinctive character. Other systems differ, and some have reached opposite conclusions internally.

Does a company own a colour?

Not in the sense the phrase implies. A registration covers stated goods or services in one territory. It does not remove the colour from general use.

Can you trademark a hex code?

Filings are typically made against a colour standard such as Pantone rather than a hex value, and the representation of the mark is itself often the point of dispute. The hex values shown here are editorial estimates for visual reference, not filing specifications.

Is this legal advice?

No. This is documentary reference from an archive of legal and registry records. It does not establish the current status of any mark and must not be used for clearance. Consult a trademark attorney.

Working with colour, not just reading about it

Colour Memory measures perceptual distance between colours and reports what the archive holds nearby. Useful when choosing a brand colour and wanting to know what territory you are walking into. It is not a clearance search and does not read live trademark registers.