[CREATE] Free and legal download of Pantone colour palettes from Adobe

[Guillermo Espertino (Gez)]

El 28/03/13 23:08, Gregory Pittman escribió:
> On 03/28/2013 09:59 PM, Guillermo Espertino (Gez) wrote:
>>
>> I think it's unlikely that they'll be against this practice, but I'm
>> sure they'd send us a beautiful cease and desist letter if we try to
>> include Pantone swatches in free software.
>>
> This is the part that I think doesn't really hang together, if this is
> what Pantone is thinking. A swatch in software really isn't a swatch. A
> CMYK emulation of a Pantone color might be close, but it's not the same
> thing.
> One might consider making a real-world swatchbook of sorts, but if you
> did it "properly" you would have to use the real spot colors to make the
> swatchbook, and it seems unlikely you would save any money doing that.

They not only sell printed books. They also license their system.
Although technically those swatches and specially colors are kind of 
difficult to cover with patents or copyright, they still have the 
copyright for the names and codes assigned to each color.
So if you're distributing a list with swatches called "Pantone", 
followed by a number matches their numbering scheme and the colors you 
associate to those numbers are the same they're using, then I think they 
have some grounds for a trademark claim.

Specially because they charge money to software maker to allow them to 
use those name, terms and colors.

So the problem is not really the color, nor the software. It's the 
trademark.

This has been discussed (long) before:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050816092029989#c350672

There some misinformed comments, but it's still an interesting read.

It's a tricky subject. They allow you end users to use the designation 
for instance when you have to send a file to the print shop, in order to 
tell the printer what color has to be used, but I don't think they would 
allow organizations or developers to ship something called "a Pantone 
palette" in a program without asking for the usual royalties.

Gez.