I was surprised to see the six registrations pictured above for color marks come out of the USPTO this month. And I bet that most of you can identify the owner of these marks without even checking the registrations. (If you must, registrations: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Although I wouldn’t consider my childhood one of rural Minnesota, I have still been aware of, and associated, the distinctive green and yellow colors on lawn and tractor equipment with John Deere for as long as I can remember. In fact, I would consider John Deere’s use of color as distinctive as any of the textbook examples (e.g. UPS brown or Owens-Corning pink). Thus, I was quite surprised to see Deere has just now received trademark registrations for some of these color marks.