All your colors are belong to us

Several sources report that a US District Court for the eastern district of Louisiana has ruled in favor of a group of universities which sought to prohibit a clothing manufacturer from making and selling clothes in their color schemes.

The ruling means that the Defendant can no longer use LSU’s purple and gold and Oklahoma’s crimson and cream, Ohio State’s scarlet and gray, and USC’s cardinal and gold in producing apparel that refers, but not necessarily by name, to those universities.

The Court’s decision is important in that few courts across the country have ever directly addressed the issue of color schemes as stand-alone trademarks.

“The University is pleased that the court has confirmed that our Scarlet and Gray color scheme is an integral and protectable component of our brand message," said Rob Cleveland, Assistant Director of Trademark & Licensing Services, The Ohio State University. "This serves to validate 128 years of Scarlet and Gray tradition and ultimately strengthen our position in the stream of commerce.”

It seems unclear to this non-lawyer exactly how the above will be applied in practice. The court's decision seems to apply to items that use the university colors with some emblem or text that refers to the university, but that's sure not the way that the Ohio State flack is spinning it. Five'll get ya ten that at least one university's legal department will sue someone for use of "their" colors with or without any accompanying emblems or text. It would indeed be amusing if universities and their lawyers interpreted it to mean that they owned a "trademark" on the use of color combinations of, say, orange and white, or green and gold, or , um, green and gold....

Perhaps other entities should get in on the landgrab, if this new spectrum of frequencies is now available for ownership. Which used-car dealer will be first in line to trademark red, white, and blue as an "integral and protectable component of his brand message"?

Edit, 12:05 pm. Thanks to Fiend for pointing out an online source for the text of the court's decision which does not, like the court's own website, demand registation and payment of 8 cents per page for viewing public documents.