A Monopoly On Color
from the such-big-business dept
I never realized that those random “color cards” you see when picking out paint was such a big business. Wired Magazine has an article discussing Pantone’s monopoly on color, and describes them as being the “communications protocol” of color. Everyone, it seems, uses Pantone’s color scheme to make sure that all their colors match. Out of this has come a new business of deciding which colors are “in”, and helping clothing designers, store designers and anyone else figure out which color is right for them. This reminds me of the law publishing company that doesn’t have the copyright on legal rulings – but does have it on the page numbers which everone uses to cite cases.
Comments on “A Monopoly On Color”
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I guess I never realized that pantones were used in stuff besides printing. It doesn’t seem like a big dealt to me though–it’s not an abusive (defacto) monopoly by any stretch. Any designer with Photoshop is free to use Pantones. Their prices for printers & manufacturers didn’t sound unreasonable in the article. And I say defacto because there are other options–looking in Photoshop, there is TRUMATCH, FOCOLTONE, TOYO, ANPA-COLOR, DIC Color Guide, and HKS. I don’t know about printers & dye makers & manufacturers but from a designer side, there are plenty of options.
And as the article mentioned, you can’t get a patent on certain wavelength so colors are unpatentable. You just can’t refer to it by the pantone color number.
Bottom line you can make anything any color you want–if you have a great need to match colors exactly, you pay Pantone a fee to use their numbering system. Big deal.
steve snyder