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.
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