protection is sought is useful or affects the cost or the quality of the article, such that granting trademark protection to the feature would put competitors at a significant disadvantage, the feature is not entitled to trademark protection. For example, a court held that the colour black when used on outboard boat motors serves a functional purpose, since the colour black is compatible with all other boat colours and also because the colour black makes the motor appear smaller. The first successful case of colour trademark was in the US. In Qualitex Co. v Jacobson Products Company, Inc. the petitioner company had been using a special shade of green-gold for their dry cleaning press pads since the 1950s. In 1989, Jacobson Products Co. started using a very similar shade of green-gold on its own press pads. Qualitex Co. got it’s shade of green-gold trademarked and also sued Jacobson for infringement. Another issue faced by colour marks is the possibility of there being litigation over shades of the same colour. A solution to this problem is designation of a colour using an internationally recognised identification code like Pantone as such codes are deemed to be precise and stable. The Pantone is a commercial system that designates specific shades numerically and categorises over thousand such shades by unique codes. Tiffany and Co.’s unique shade of blue ‘Tiffany Blue’ has been a registered trademark since 1998 and also has its own custom Pantone number – 1837, the year the company was founded. T-Mobile’s colour ‘Magenta’, Mattel’s ‘Barbie Pink’, UPS’s ‘Pullman Brown’ are some more examples of colour marks. India is yet to set precedence as far as colour marks are concerned.

Smell Mark

Smell marks or Olfactory marks rely on their distinct smell to remind the consumers of the source i.e. the brand or the manufacturer of the product. Once distinctive, a smell is one of the most powerful manners to differentiate the goods of one merchant from those of the other. Smell marks are one of the most difficult kind of marks to get registered. However, smell being so subjective, may be perceived differently by different people. The subjectivity of smell acts as a hindrance in its distinctiveness. Another issue is the difficulty in graphically representing smells. One way to represent a smell could be to orally describe it so precisely that it doesn’t get confused with any other smell, but this is quite an arduous task. Writing the chemical formula for the substance is problematic as the formula represents the substance and not the smell itself. Samples of the smell could be stored but these may either vanish over time or change their nature when exposed to certain external factors like heat and humidity. Another important thing to note is that the scent must neither originate from the goods itself nor be functional. Functionality Doctrine again plays a role here and if any smell has a functional use, the registration of which could lead to significant disadvantage to competitors, such smell may be disbarred from registration. However, there is no clear-cut definition for functionality. For example, the smell of lemon for garbage plastic bags; the smell itself can be distinctive, but it can also be functional because it can mask the smell of waste and garbage. Fashion hou