PCInk - 9:57 am on Dec 16, 2003 (gmt 0)

You can trademark wierd things like colours in the UK, too. But not a general coverage, so someone cannot just trademark yellow. But BT could have trademarked yellow with regard to printing a book for looking up business contacts or phone numbers, so other books have to be a different colour. But that wouldn't stop someone producing a yellow book about cooking.

They didn't trademark the yellow pages colour, and now they've sold it on, they are going to re-release their own variety again.

I believe copying a title tag may be to little for the copyright legislation. Remember, we can use short snippets of articles without seeking consent (I can't remember how much). The UK TV channels can use up to thirty seconds of another channels broadcast before they have to pay them, this allows them to report news items about other channels, for example. But they (or we) must state where the source was from. On TV, it often has 'Courtesy of ITV' or 'Courtesy of BBC' in little letters on the screen. Now, that is something that they have not done.

Of course, all the above is UK law, which is very similar to US law for trademark and copyright issues, but there are some differences.