Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Magenta, also known as purple and fuchsia, is an extra-spectral color, a color not found on the spectrum of visible light as a single wavelength. It’s a combination of red and blue wavelengths with greater intensity than any green wavelengths that are present (in the additive primaries system, magenta can be described as minus green).
In the realm of kings and queens and glorious extravagances, magenta, usually known as purple, is a royal color.
And in the realm of frivolous lawsuits, it’s the color that a federal district court judge in Texas decided was protected by trademark. At the Washington Post, Brian Fung has the details.
Meanwhile, here are the colors, produced by Flathead Memo using Adobe Photoshop’s Pantone library:
On the left, the trademarked magenta. On the right, the magenta the court said was an infringing color. There’s not much difference, but there is a difference, and I think the judge’s color vision and commonsense need to be tested. These color patches, incidentally, won’t appear the same on all monitors, but they will appear close to their true values on correctly calibrated monitors with color management enabled.
I take a dim view of trademark disputes of this nature, so Fung’s report both produced a chuckle and left me seeing red.