1458 Orange You Sad

The purpose of these commentaries has always been to discuss the excesses of modern culture. Particularly how we seem to go from the practical to the absurd on our road of life.
Take the whole idea of copyrighting and registered trademarks. Good in it’s simplest state. If you have a new idea or product and it becomes enormously popular you should be able to profit from it without a bunch of copycats leaching off your time and efforts.
But how far does that go? You can’t say your bar is having a Superbowl party? Mark Zuckerberg copyrights the word Face?
So imagine my dismay the other day when I was looking at the packaging on a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and saw the following phrase: “Orange background color is a registered trademark.”
Really? The federal copyright office allowed The Hershey Company to trademark a color?
As I have seen that color in the background of numerous items, I’m hoping the Reese’s Police won’t be visiting my office anytime soon.
Or visiting Home Depot. In certain lights, their aprons look amazingly like peanut butter cup packages. Are they number 142 on the orange-red color wheel, or number 143? Will the lawyer’s investigators have a portable tint-o-scope that indisputably determines what is what, and raises a hue and cry?
What if one batch of packages gets mixed in with a bad batch of ink? If salmonella can creep into the peanut supply, what’s to keep some fungus from distorting die?
A friend pointed out that maybe it’s just the use of that orange color in conjunction with the use of the term “cup” or “peanut butter.” Or “Reese.”
If so, we’d better hope at the next Oscars some designer doesn’t put a burnt orange gown on Reese Witherspoon.
America, ya gotta love it.