NEWS
EVENTS
Cadbury's gobble up shade of purple
Tuesday 2nd October 2012 | Liam
Cadbury's go to extreme length of copyrighting their own personal colour
After arguing laboriously for almost a decade, courts finally gave in and allowed Cadbury’s to trademark their very own shade of purple in what is probably one of the most spurious cases of all time. The chocolate company wished to copyright the particular shade for exclusive use as part of the ‘visible surface or the predominant colour applied to the whole visible surface’ of its chocolate bars. And eventually the High Courts took a huge exaggerated sigh of resignation and said, ‘Yeah, whatever, do what you want. Can we go home now?’
It’s like a selfish sibling lording over a patch of carpet or, more controversially, like Israel staking a claim to land because it says so in the Bible. For starters, how can you own a colour? Rainbows own all colours, everyone knows that. Secondly, everyone also knows Cadbury’s got the idea for purple from the Guestlist Network after CEOs visited the guestlist.net and ‘thoroughly enjoyed the high-quality content and up-to-the-minute coverage of new music, fashion, travel and current affairs.’ They had one little niggling criticism: ‘Not enough about chocolate bars.’ There’s just no pleasing some people.
What Cadbury’s will do with this new found power is up for speculation. Will they send out goons armed with colour charts to accost anyone wearing similar colours in public? Will they sue the sky if ever their particular shade appears at sunset? Will Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple, be reprimanded in retrospect for breaching copyright with her Booker Prize-winning novel about the position of black women in 1930’s America? Will the good people at Cadbury’s go one further and claim rights to the gastric bands of the morbidly obese who gorge to bursting point on Fruit&Nut bars? (But it’s got fruit in – it must be healthy!)
And what repercussions will this have for the wider world? Will lollypop ladies and men battle against construction workers for the sole rights to wear a shade of yellow? Will the makers of chalkboards launch assaults on black cabs? Will red bus drivers stalk the streets of London painting post boxes and phone boxes a slightly paler version of red? This could spark a colour chart war like no other! And everyone is overlooking the true monopolisers of colour. Dulux. Watch out for that backlash, Cadbury’s, as the paint specialists throw a spanner into your paint mix! ‘That’s not your shade of purple, my son. That’s Chive Bloom.’
Here at the Guestlist Network, we wouldn’t normally kick up a fuss about small matters like the ownership of colour, but we’re willing to make an exception for a company owned by a global giant that sells spray-on cheese. For blatantly travelling through time from 1969 and passing off a very similar shade of purple as your own we want a signed blank cheque addressed to the Guestlist Network. Or failing that a free box of Cadbury’s chocolate bars.
By Liam McKenna
