Design Forums - UK Graphic Design & Web Design Forum

you mean the specific colour of a bean tin wasn't interesting enough?!

but yea, i'm sure it's just been copyrighted so other bean makers don't copy heinz' look to dupe stoopid peepal into buying their product instead. Saw a vauely interesting documentary a while ago about shops like sainsbury's putting the brand leader's product mid-shelf to draw people in and then put all the other similar products around that... they did an experiment and moved the brand leader to another part of the store and all the other similar brand that would have been above and below didn't sell as well.

On the colour trademarking part of the thread, reminds me of the dispute between Orange and EasyMobile in 2004 - BBC NEWS | Magazine | Can you 'own' a colour?

I think you can copyright the trademark colour usage in the products field.
ie tins of beans etc. Orange i think have copyrighted Pantone 151 orange in the mobile field.Likewise Cadbury's and their purple
I think there is a big arguement and dabate over the 'importance ' of colour' and that importance of brand colour recogniton has great bearing whether or not the copyright will be granted. It has to be proved that the colour recognition like the brand logo has value and could be used by competitors in that area to infringe and use and therefore benefit.

I rememember Easy Jet trying to copyright the word Easy a while back.

Surely with reguards to copyrighting the word easy, you couldnt start an airline and call it easy plane or something?

I think Stelios genuinely thought he could copyright the word Easy over every form of usage and term. That was the belly laugh i remember back then.

I might try and copyright the letter 'a' and complete world domination

Didn't Microsoft try and copyright the number 1 a few years ago?

I worked on come of the colour copyright in Australasia for PricewaterhouseCoopers.. its unfortunately a very big thing

I think Paris Hilton tried to compyright "that's hot" after Trump copyrighted "you're fired".

USATODAY.com - Trump seeks to trademark 'You're fired!'

Paris Hilton sues over 'That's hot' card - USATODAY.com

the Trump example is scary, because that means if Sugar went over there he would have to pay him to say it!

EDIT: I realise there is a difference between trade marks, copyrights and patents, I'm just not entirely sure what they are, and these seem like good examples...