Pip pip cheerio to the trademark of breakfast yellow!

Faced with a blind taste test, many would favor the infamous General Mill’s Cheerios over the Trader Joe’s O’s, as cereal competitors. Faced with choosing between the two iconic breakfast yellow boxes may prove to be the harder task.

In 2017, The US trademark court office first denied Cheerio’s request to trademark the color yellow in the breakfast world. Cheerios failed to provide adequate enough reasons for the yellow to be their intellectual property.

In 2018, General Mills was shut down again by the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. The judge, in this case, denied the cereal brand from having exclusive rights to the color yellow. He claimed that it is industry practice for breakfast brands of all kinds to market themselves with bright colors.

Trademarking a color allows a particular brand to use a specific and unique color combination while preventing other companies, in the same industry, from also using it.

The Lanham Act of 1946 provides the definition of a trademark as a “mark used in commerce or registered with a bona fide intent to use it in commerce” See 15 U.S.C. § 1127.

The first color was trademarked in 1958 by Owens-Corning for the color pink in insulation products. Close your eyes – can you picture it?

If you know insulation pink, you are probably familiar with other trademarked colors – Tiffany Blue, Loubiton Red, John Deere Green, Hermes Orange, T-Mobile Magenta – the list goes on.

Certainly, it would be much harder to identify one mobile communication company from another if we allowed them all to use Magenta.

As for cereal? We love Kix, Captain Crunch, Honey Combs, and Pops all too much to allow Cheerios the intellectual property rights of yellow.

So pip pip cheerio to the trademark of breakfast yellow for now!