^^^
This podcast episode discusses this very question at length, along with a history of Pantone’s pallette
Generally no, but I wouldn’t rule out that it might be possible in a limited way in very specific circumstances. You wouldn’t be able to stop others from using certain colors.
A specific color scheme might also be used as a trademark.
I don’t think you can copyright a color, per se. You can trademark certain uses of color in certain schemes. For example, the walmart smiley is trademarked, but they can’t go after people just using a yellow smiley. or like, Checker Cabs, with their yellow and black livery. (as mentioned elsewhere, the pantone colorset is trademarked.
Further, you can get patents for pigments- specifically, their production methods, and how they get bound into a solvent or whatever. For an example here- Vanta Black. If someone were to get their hands on some second hand, the people that make it can’t stop them from using it, but they could go after another company producing it the same way they do.
Copyright protections are for works of art (or other works, eh.), and while there are plenty of monochrome works, part of what makes “art” … “art” is composition. For example, in the sampling of monochrome, that first one is a blue panel set inside a white frame. Others, you see the single color is composed of texture. (the Yves Klien painting, for example.) Or, like Gerhard Ricther’s solid gray which was expressly intended to convey… nothing (A lack of emotion or feeling, etc.)
But all of these are more than just the color they’re painted in.
I believe trademark would be the proper area for something like this. I don’t believe it would be enforceable, but could be weaponized to bleed someone of money via court. Not a lawyer.
Anish has entered the chat
Doesn’t he have a bean to flick?
There are only 16777216 colors people care about. There are way more people than that in the world. We could live in a colorless society if 0.2% of humans decided to steal all colors
I call dibs on green©
Shit, i would own a whole lot to Mr Viridis
