There is another color dispute up for a decision by Germany's high court Bundesgerichtshof, this time about the color blue.
Writer Alice Walker will be happy she named her famous book the Color Purple, that cousin of the color blue.
The latest quarrel in a series of German court cases about colors of popular brands involves Nivea, one of the two quintessential German baby butt cremes. The other is Penaten.
Both products are iconic brands from times when life was a lot less complicated and when having one product of any kind in your bathroom cabinet, or on your kitchen shelves, or in your drawers was considered enough.
But in a world in which we feel deprived of our value as consumers if a store dares to offer only two hand or bottom cremes, brands fight fiercely over what they see as infringements of their color schemes.
We wrote about the slug fest unleashed by dictionary maker Langenscheidt against digital language learners Rosetta about the use of the color yellow. Despite the fact that the two yellows are actually quite different, the German court sided with Langenscheidt. It just goes to show that they didn't read our blog post - just kidding.
The folks at the K-Landnews have a simple approach to dealing with color fights: we won't buy a product or service from a company that drags a competitor to court over a color.
This is not as spiteful as it may seem, because most of the color fights emanate not from companies who are doing well but from those who have seen their market share shrink because of new technologies or better competitors.
It so happens that Nivea is one of them. The blogster used their creme as a farmer (Life #2 or so of the Twitter list) but stopped and has not looked back since.
The main issue of color fights in the opinion of the blogster is this: they are condescending because they imply consumers are either stupid or will grab a product that has the right color and not think twice.
In the case of Nivea and other beauty products, this devastating view of consumers is in stark contrast to consumers having been the driving force behind disclosure of ingredients and behind removal of dodgy preservatives and other chemicals.
What does this mean for Easter egg colors?
If you use yellow, make sure not to give any to people who work for Langenscheidt. That should be easy because the company has been getting smaller.
If you use red, you are still safe because the court has not decided the case of Santander bank against the Sparkasse yet. It is recommended that you have a male color red eggs to achieve plausible deniability and to exploit a physical difference between human males and females recently discovered by scientists: men generally do not distinguish as many shades of red as women!
If you use blue, use up all your supplies of blue this year to be safe next year. Your resident linguist also recommends to watch your language if Nivea gets a favorable decision in court.
You will be able to continue to say the sky is blue or someone has blue eyes. You should possibly avoid to say I'm feeling blue or talk about blue balls. The shade of blue in I'm feeling blue is undetermined and hence may expose you to litigation.
When you talk about blue balls, you could, of course, take a picture to prove that they are not Nivea blue but the existence of the photo could bring all kinds of new troubles.
One more thing:
While certainly not buying anything Nivea, we appreciate the opportunity to write about blue balls.
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