BP loses colour green in trademark bid.

BP fails again at another attempt to trademark the colour green in Australia.

The IP office in Australia found there to be little “convincing evidence” that the customer of petrol would closely link the shade of green (known as Pantone 348C) with the company.

The battle began in 1991 where whereby legal action was fought and was ongoing till 2013, with its titan Woolworths, to trademark the colour for its service stations.

Colours are hard to trademark as the company would need to prove the shade sufficiently distinguishes from others, much like sounds and smells.

Bruce Arnold, a University of Canberra law professor specialising in IP law commented on the matter saying:

“People sometimes think that someone is going to actually own a particular colour, but it’s not as simple as that,” he said. “It’s a particular shade of colour that the rights holder owns, which they only use to identify their goods and services. So if BP had got green, it could have claimed that shade in relation to their products, but I could still wear a green jumper or a green tie.”

Arnold futhered this to say that, like cadbury, the courts would be more likely to grant a colour trademark if it would prevent or minimise customer confusionand that “When colour trademarks were first introduced in Australia, there was speculation we’d have major problems,”

“There was speculation that law firms would be pushing colour trademarks to a range of businesses, and we’d see a wave of trademark registration. But that hasn’t happened. Basically, colour trademarks look like a bit of a fizzer.”

Theresa Wright