Cheerios’ Failed Case for Yellow Shows Why It's So Hard for Brands to Trademark Colors

General Mills' defeat illustrates one of branding's trickiest tasks

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It’s bad enough for General Mills that Americans have been losing interest in breakfast cereal for the past decade or more, but the brand got more bad news last week when the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board rejected its application to trademark the use of yellow on Cheerios boxes.

The problem for the packaged-foods giant wasn’t so much that consumers didn’t recognize Cheerios’ famous yellow box; it was that too many other cereals were already using yellow on their boxes.

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