Does my poo have to pay royalties to UPS?
ALL YOUR BROWN ARE BELONG TO USGet this: my wife just discovered that the UPS corporation has trademarked the color brown. Yes, you got that right. Go to their corporate homepage, and click on the "trademarks" link at the bottom. Download their trademarks PDF. You will find the following text on the front page:
Published by UPS Brand Management.(emphasis added.) Looking inside, you can see some of the other terms they've trademarked:
© Copyright 2003 United Parcel Service of America, Inc.
UPS, the UPS brandmark and the color brown are registered trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.
Trademarks in the U.S.
2005-2007 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. Rev. 4/07
Big Brown Truck®Um, dude, that is totally wack.
Brown®
Color Brown®
posted by Zachary Drake at 6/25/2007 07:08:00 AM
4 Comments:
That must explain last night's SNL sketch about fedexing faeces.
It's not as arbitrary as it seems. Trademark law requires that the trademark be enforceable only against a certain class or classes of goods. In UPS's case, it's probably Class 39 (Transportation and Storage).
Abbreviated list can be found here. http://www.oppedahl.com/trademarks/tmclasses.htm
Thanks Anthony. So my stools are exempt, unless they try to start a package delivery service. Still, it seems like it wouldn't be hard for all the colors to get taken quickly. Then no one can enter the market unless their corporate logo is puce.
Fortunately, I don't have to worry about UPS... my poo is usually orange.
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