Next year, Kermit the Frog may be singing, "It IS easy being green." He'll be delighted to know that Pantone has selected Emerald Green as the Color of the Year for 2013, and will feel right at home on its Pinterest board devoted to the exact shade of green: 17-5641.

For over a decade, Pantone, a company long associated with setting color standards in printing, has been selecting a "Color of the Year." According to the company, "Pantone quite literally combs the world looking for color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections, hot new artists, popular travel destinations and other socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from technology, availability of new textures and effects that impact color, and even upcoming sports events that capture worldwide attention."

So why is 2013 a Green kind of year? "Green is the most abundant hue in nature — the human eye sees more green than any other in the spectrum," said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. "Symbolically, Emerald brings a sense of clarity, renewal and rejuvenation, which is so important in today's complex world. This powerful and universally appealing tone translates easily to both fashion and home interiors."Continue reading...

When the color purple comes up in conversation, many automatically think of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel that told the story of 1930s African American women in rural Georgia or the excellent film version that showcased just how underrated as actresses Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg could be. Others think of Donny Osmond’s socks. Parents of preschoolers may associate it with that unwieldy dinosaur Barney.

But to a group of folks in Birmingham, England (and another in Northfield, Illinois), purple is the color of money. And they’ll do everything they have to to hang onto their own particular shade of the color. For years, Cadbury, the candy maker based in Birmingham and owned by Kraft Mondelez, has been doing battle with Nestle over a particular shade of purple that it received trademark rights to back in 2008.

The fight seemed to reach an endpoint late last year when the registrar at the UK Intellectual Property Office decided that Cadbury was within its rights to ask for Pantone 2865c to be exclusively theirs for chocolate products and drinks. After all, Cadbury had been using that particular shade since 1914 in honor of Queen Victoria.Continue reading...

Fashion brands are particularly fussy when it comes to protecting an attribute that defines their very soul — or in the case of Christian Louboutin, its sole.

The designer of shoes with iconic red bottoms that sell for as high as $3995 a pair, Louboutin has been sticking its stilettos into counterfeiters who sell fake versions of pricey pairs of their shoes, as well as other fashion brands who dare to step on their trademarked sole. 

Last August, Louboutin took legal action in a U.S. court against another French fashion firm, Yves Saint Laurent. The case had interesting trademark implications: Louboutin had argued that YSL was infringing on its intellectual property by introducing all-red shoes. But a New York judge rebuffed the argument, stating that "Loubotin's claim would cast a red cloud over the whole industry, cramping what other designers could do while allowing Louboutin to paint with a full palette. Louboutin would thus be able to market a total outfit in red, while other designers would not."

Louboutin appealed the decision and now, in the latest twist, it has won a trademark battle, but not the trademark war.Continue reading...

Sephora, the high-end beauty retailer owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, operates more than 1,600 stores worldwide where customers can try and apply make-up before they buy. Under digital head Julie Bornstein, Sephora is in the midst of its own “social and mobile makeover,” bridging the worlds of offline and online — stylishly, of course.

Case in point: today Sephora announced a partnership with Pantone, the global color authority, for a digital app. Dubbed SEPHORA + PANTONE COLOR IQ, it's described as "the most advanced foundation matching solution available in North American beauty retail. Using Pantone’s color capture and measuring technology, SEPHORA + PANTONE COLOR IQ is the first and only beauty system to scan the surface of the skin, assign an official PANTONE® SkinTone™ number, and match a scientifically precise foundation shade from Sephora’s 1,000 foundations, brands and formulas." The service launches today at Sephora's Times Square flagship in New York, and on August 2nd in San Francisco.

Social business, as Brian Solis calls it, is de rigueur for brands today, iterating from social to digital and experiential. That's why Sephora is taking its digital operations to the next level in a redesigned website with amped up search, an iOS mobile app and a new mobile website, Sephora is installing iPads in more than 100 of its stores in an integration with Pinterest replete with “Pin It” buttons for all its product pages.Continue reading...

Executives at Christian Louboutin are likely seeing red after losing a court battle against Zara over a pair of $70 red-soled shoes.

Louboutin took Zara to court in 2008 and won when the shoes hit the market saying that it alone had the rights to produce and sell red-soled shoes, but an appeals court in France has ruled in favor of Zara and is telling Louboutin it also has to fork over £2,500, or about $3,600, according to New York magazine. 

That isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, of course, but it’s an extra little face-rub in the mud for Louboutin, which has been on the warpath against counterfeiters of its signature red-soled shoes.

The ruling also doesn’t bode well for a bigger Louboutin appeal, against Yves Saint Laurent, in a case that the brand lost last summer in New York.Continue reading...

Christian Louboutin is not about to let its very recognizable red sole get stepped on. The flash of color under spikey heels has become an identifying mark of the designer's high-priced shoes. Last August, Louboutin sought to protect that red sole in a case that pitted the iconic design house against another fashion legend, Yves Saint Laurent, who introduced shoes that were red all over, including the soles. But Louboutin was rebuffed by US District Judge Victor Marrero.

Hizzoner ruled that Christian Louboutin did not have a lock on the color red. In his opinion, Marrero wrote that "Louboutin's claim would cast a red cloud over the whole industry, cramping what other designers could do while allowing Louboutin to paint with a full palette. Louboutin would thus be able to market a total outfit in red, while other designers would not."

On Tuesday, Christian Louboutin was back in court, this time at the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, in an attempt to defend its right to exclusively use red, and specifically a tone it calls "China Red," on the soles of it shoes. Louboutin's attorney, Harley Lewin, told a three-judge panel that "Christian Louboutin has created one of the more iconic trademarks of the 21st century. Louboutin turned a pedestrian item into a thing of beauty."

Opposing attorney David Bernstein, arguing on behalf of Yves St. Laurent, countered "Artists of this type need the full palette of colors available. In order to compete and compete fairly, we need red. We don't want to find out that we can make green, blue, purple shoes... but we are enjoined from making red."Continue reading...

It's a funny thing about color. It can lift a mood as much as depress it. Color is so much a part of brand marketing that many consumers may not even think about the impact one color or another has on a purchase decision.

Pantone knows just how important color is in marketing; in fact, the company has built a business around it. Each year, Pantone, which describes itself as "the global authority on color," selects a color of the year — before the year begins — to rally the world's designers around it. In fact, the color is selected based on a poll conducted with designers. Last year's color was the "vibrant, energetic" shade of pink called Honeysuckle; some referred to it as "Mad Men pink."

For 2012, Pantone's pick moves the dail a few clicks hotter, from a warm pink to pure tangerine dream, with the selection of "Tangerine Tango," a citrus-red hue that leans orange than red — although it's certainly red hot, popping up all over the Spring 2012 runway collections during the September Fashion Week shows.Continue reading...

British candy maker Cadbury has been wrapping up its chocolates in a particular purple wrapper for more than 100 years. It was originally meant as a way of honoring Queen Victoria. The company felt so attached to that shade of the color that it registered it as a trademark back in 2008.

When it was granted, one of its main competitors, Nestlé, decided to put up a fight, which has gone on now for three years before ending when the registrar at the UK Intellectual Property Office decided that the Kraft-owned Cadbury was within its rights to ask for Pantone 2865c to be exclusively theirs for chocolate products and drinks.

If the trademark had been lifted, the Birmingham News reports that it would have “opened the floodgates for rivals, including supermarkets, to use the color on their own-brand chocolate bars.” Sweetening the sting of the ruling, Time.com notes that Nestle (and anyone else) can still use Pantone 2865c on any other products that they’d like.Continue reading...