https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process
'For people who work in pre-press, a key part of their Adobe toolset is
integration with Pantone. Pantone is a system for specifying color-matching. A
Pantone number corresponds to a specific tint that's either made by mixing the
four standard print colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black, AKA "CMYK"), or by
applying a "spot" color. Spot colors are added to print jobs after the normal
CMYK passes – if you want a stripe of metallic gold or a blob of hot pink, you
specify its Pantone number and the printer loads up a separate ink and runs
your media through its printer one more time.
Pantone wants to license this system out, so it needs some kind of
copyrightable element. There aren't many of these in the Pantone system!
There's the trademark, but that's a very thin barrier. Trademark has a broad
"nominative use" exception: it's not a trademark violation to say, "Pantone
448C corresponds to the hex color #4a412a."
Perhaps there's a copyright? Well yes, there's a "thin" database copyright on
the Pantone values and their ink equivalents. Anyone selling a RIP or printer
that translates Pantone numbers to inks almost certainly has to license
Pantone's copyright there. And if you wanted to make an image-editing program
that conveyed the ink data to a printer, you'd best take a license.
All of this is suddenly relevant because it appears that things have broken
down between Adobe and Pantone. Rather than getting Pantone support bundled in
with your Adobe apps, you must now pay $21/month for a Pantone plugin.'
Via Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
