> Frankly, a 1:1 mapping of Pantone to Freetone sounds like copyright infringement.
I would argue that the Pantone colour library is effectively an API for reproducing specific colours as paint (with the context that APIs are largely protected under fair use).
Pantone should be compensated for what they do. They should have the option to recoup their costs but not necessarily by restricting others from using their published digital interface for colour-to-paint reproduction.
They should be able to maintain IP rights for the tooling they build to faithfully reproduce those colours as paint and their trademark should obviously be protected but the actual colour codes themselves? How is that any different than say Google using the same API for Oracle's Java for their alternative JDK & JVM?
At the end of the day in both cases, the useful part isn't the API/colour codes but the tech used to actually run Java/reproduce those colours faithfully as paint.
> I would argue that the Pantone colour library is effectively an API for reproducing specific colours as paint
I would roughly say that Pantone is a specific arrangement of a set of specific items, with the arrangement intentionally conveying a unique meaning to the set. Just like a book or a picture or song or a piece of code.
(IANAL, I don't intend that definition to stand up in courts, just describing how and why it makes sense to me that it could or should be treated the same way)
I would argue that the Pantone colour library is effectively an API for reproducing specific colours as paint (with the context that APIs are largely protected under fair use).
Pantone should be compensated for what they do. They should have the option to recoup their costs but not necessarily by restricting others from using their published digital interface for colour-to-paint reproduction.
They should be able to maintain IP rights for the tooling they build to faithfully reproduce those colours as paint and their trademark should obviously be protected but the actual colour codes themselves? How is that any different than say Google using the same API for Oracle's Java for their alternative JDK & JVM?
At the end of the day in both cases, the useful part isn't the API/colour codes but the tech used to actually run Java/reproduce those colours faithfully as paint.